Words As A Weapon
by Lapis Love
Summary: Inspired by 7x19 Bonnie confides in her best friend Caroline who urges her to seek closure. Everyone could see the young, doomed witch was holding on to her anger for Damon Salvatore, but what was the underlining reason? Abandonment or love?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: We rage, we cry, we look for the silver lining. This is me looking for the silver lining. Inspired by 7x19 because several things were exposed in the context if you know what to look for, or know what questions to ask. No Bonenzo, but it is mentioned. Baroline and Bamon ahead. Other things you need to know, Bonnie doesn't have those nasty scabs yet. Besides that, angst ahead.**

 **Disclaimer: Characters belong to LJ Smith/CW. Plot is mine. No copyright infringement is intended.**

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" _People belong in your life by natural vibration, not forced will or expectation."_

They stared at one another pained….

….feelings existed there that were uncomfortable, that were different from what they were used to feeling for one another…

….decisions would have to be made; there'd be no backing out of this…and yet…

One chose to hide in self-imposed darkness. One was left behind, abandoned with a broken heart…a heart now encased in ice and stone…

1.

Bonnie's visit to Dallas would be short, an overnighter because the risk was too great to stay any longer than that. She arrived a little after three o'clock in the afternoon, hoodie on, dark sunglasses to conceal her notable orbs. Hustling through the busy airport, she stood in line waiting for a cab. Once one was procured, she rattled off the address and settled into the supple leather seat observing the downtown metropolitan area and its cloud touching skyscrapers. The sheer size of the city made her feel microscopically small by comparison, and anonymous. One thing she needed as she was still on the run.

The phone smashed between her palms vibrated. A gentle smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she read the text from her boyfriend, and typed a reply she made it safely. Another message hit her inbox, this one giving her a status update on the progress being made to eliminate Rayna's targets. Bonnie lost her smile as she was reminded of one of the reasons she wanted to escape from her topsy-turvy life for five seconds.

Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up along the street and parked in the driveway of Alaric's home, a quaint two-story bungalow in a recently gentrified area. Paying the fare, Bonnie headed up the pathway and rung the bell. The door opened.

Caroline Forbes beamed as bright as a moonbeam. "You finally made it to Dallas!" she yanked her best friend into a bruising hug that squeezed the breath out of Bonnie who giggled bemusedly, and did her best to hug Caroline just as tightly.

Bonnie's nose began to tingle, a sure sign the waterworks were coming. Seeing her close friend for the first time in person in three years hammered in how disconnected Bonnie felt from her old life. Hammered in how much she missed being able to call Caroline at any hour of the day, pop up on her doorstep. She'd had to keep her distance and communication at the minimal because of The Armory, so being here under the same roof as Caroline bought out a lot of emotion.

Hugging Caroline reminded her of something else. Her inhuman strength.

"Ribs," Bonnie wheezed.

"Oops, sorry. Come in. How was your flight?" Caroline stepped aside and closed the door once Bonnie entered the residence. She discreetly wiped a tear away because it wasn't until now Caroline was hit with how much she missed Bonnie. She knew this was only a twenty-four hour visit and already she was dreading having to say goodbye. For now, she'd relish having Bonnie so close.

Zipping off her hoodie, Bonnie stashed it across her overnight bag she dropped on a chair next to the front door. She gave the home a cursory look before bringing her gaze to Caroline.

"My flight would have been better had the dude sitting next to me didn't confuse my shoulder with his headrest. When he ended up slapping himself awake I think he got the message."

Caroline laughed and ushered Bonnie into the kitchen. There was a spread of Dallas cuisine laid out on the table, a pan of double fudge brownies cooling on the center island. The saliva in Bonnie's mouth pooled, stomach growled with hunger. Peanuts and bottles of water had sustained her on the flight, and it wasn't until now that Bonnie realized she was starving.

"Where are the girls and Alaric?" Bonnie settled on a stool, eyeing the brownies.

"The girls had a play date and afterwards a party to go to. So we'll have the house to ourselves at least until eight. Hungry?"

"Yes," Bonnie hopped off the stool to wash her hands.

The two worked around each other piling food on plates, pouring drinks into tall glasses. They went through the requisite catching up questions: work, the twins etc.

Munching on a chicken leg, Caroline licked barbeque sauce from her thumb. "So how are things between you and Enzo?"

Bonnie washed down her bite of food with a sip of her iced tea prior to answering. "Good. Things are good. It's nice to see him every day instead of when he could manage to slip away to come see me without The Armory noticing."

The immortal withheld making a comment as she had her opinions about Enzo. Not many of them positive, and no one liked their boyfriend to be bashed. However, there was another male in Bonnie's life Caroline was curious to hear details on and whether or not Bonnie would divulge any.

"Damon?" she elevated an eyebrow.

Bonnie scowled at the mention of his name. "I don't know. I haven't been forced to deal with him for the last couple of days."

Hearing the edge in Bonnie's voice, Caroline traipsed to neutral territory. "How are things coming along in finding the Phoenix Stone vampires?"

Shaking her head at the dizzying amount of souls that had been in the stone, Bonnie candidly spoke about her dwindling hope they'd all be killed in time before the scabs would appear signaling the end stage of taking those anti-magic pills. The other piece to that was…

"Say Rayna's life is transferred to me before those vampires can be hunted down and killed…am I going to end up just like her? Am I going to become obsessed with taking them out? I don't want that."

"I don't want that for you either, Bonnie. There's gotta be some other way to save your life. I can't lose you again."

Bonnie's chin quivered. "And I don't want to die again."

Reaching over, Caroline rubbed her arm wishing she had the magic words to say that could reverse every bad thing that's ever befallen her friend. She could no more than offer a hopeful smile.

"The Armory…" Caroline began tentatively. "You figured out what they want with you?"

Bonnie nodded. "They need a Bennett witch to open a vault built underneath their headquarters. I don't know what's in it, but at this point if it means I don't have to spend my last days running, I'll open it."

"Do you think it's smart to give them what they want?"

"Is it ever smart to give into a shady organization? No, but what are my other options, Care?" _I'm dying._

Thinking of her impending death coaxed Bonnie to remember the times she died and her attitude about her mortality in the last few days. Revealing to Caroline she didn't want to die relieved a weight off her shoulders, but also brought back a poignant memory of saying those words to Damon five years ago. She had died but he had been right there with her, holding her hand, fingers intertwined.

Bonnie smashed her molars together and asked for more Mac-n-Cheese.

"I wouldn't do anything until you have more to go on," Caroline heaped more cheesy noodles on Bonnie's plate.

Yeah, that went without saying.

Bellies full the two friends later occupied the living room sitting on opposite couches. Music on low in the background, beer bottle in her hand, Bonnie swigged from it occasionally. Caroline giggled and the witch stared at her askance.

"What?" Bonnie said.

"Nothing…well…and I know you probably don't want to talk about this, but fuck it we spend too much time _not_ talking about the things that matter. Anyways, your situation with Damon reminds me of how I felt abandoned by Stefan after you and Damon died. I was pissed at him for not wanting to hold on to the life he built in Mystic Falls, but also in part…I had fallen in love with him."

Bonnie swallowed and sat up straighter along the arm of the couch. An alarming pang went through her. "Are you trying to suggest I'm in love with Damon because I'm angry he chose desiccation and didn't have the guts to tell me to my face?"

"Yeah," Caroline hefted a shoulder insouciantly.

"How drunk are you right now?"

"I'm not drunk. I'm calling things as I see them."

"Maybe you need to get your eyes checked because I'm not seeing the correlation here."

"Of course you wouldn't because you're too close to things to be objective," Caroline adjusted on the couch, stretching her legs on the coffee table. "You barely gave Elena and me a slap on the wrist for not noticing that you were dead for three months after you brought Jeremy back to life. Your anger with Damon taking a 60 year nap infuriated you, and you have every right to be pissed at him. I'm not saying you don't."

"That was different," Bonnie argued. "I could see you guys. With Damon…I never would have seen him again." she tipped the bottle to her lips and guzzled. "He chose not to be here for me. You guys didn't have one. I'm not in love with him. I'm extremely hurt by his actions or I was."

Caroline gave her a perfunctory look. "Sure."

"I'm with Enzo. I _love_ Enzo."

"Un-hun."

Bonnie swung her legs off the couch feeling her ire being deliberately pricked, feeling goaded. "I'm a Bennett not a Petrova. Loving two people at the same time is not my thing."

"First time for everything," Caroline singsong.

"Whatever!" Bonnie seethed.

"Answer this…since Damon came to see you, since you've been around him—reluctantly, have you made love to Enzo?" she waited as Bonnie remained incriminatingly mute. "I didn't think so."

With a roll of her eyes, Bonnie placed the empty beer bottle on a coaster. The veins in her head weren't throbbing, but she suspected they would be very soon if she and Caroline didn't veer off this topic. However, the need to defend why she hadn't been intimate with her boyfriend superheated her tongue.

"We haven't had time," she defended lamely.

"People who are being chased by a serial killer or hired assassins in movies always manage to find time to have sex. What's your excuse? Can't get a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed pest out of your head?"

"All this talk about me. What about you?" Bonnie threw Caroline into the fire.

The blonde immortal squirmed on the cushion as she picked absentmindedly at the label on the beer bottle. "What about me?"

Bonnie presented a knowing, self-serving smirk and gestured at their surroundings, the immaculate suburban domicile that had Caroline's signature written all over it. "This," she said at length. "This is what you honestly want? To mother children, albeit beautiful and intelligent as they are, who aren't technically yours, and marry a guy who under different circumstances could be your uncle?"

Caroline pressed her lips together. Her gaze wandered to the pictures that lined a fireplace mantle chronicling the twins stages of growth with her holding one child and Alaric the other. Their proud smiles, the happiness that seemingly poured out of each photograph that told a story about a family that seemed to have been constructed through and by normal means.

"I'm happy," Caroline attested. "I love being a mother and Alaric he…he…he's good to me. What more could I want?"

"Stefan."

Caroline shot daggers at Bonnie. "I've made my peace with it, Bonnie."

"Have you? And I'm not being facetious, I really want to know. Have you honestly made peace with things?"

A person with a genius IQ wasn't needed to explain Caroline would have preferred to have a say in being a mother rather than the choice being made for her, and having to go along with it. And yes, she had much different _far_ different aspirations as to who her future husband would be. She was in too deep now. Josette and Elizabeth needed her. It was for them she woke up every morning with an artificial façade of happiness juxtaposed on her face.

But sometimes it was too heavy a responsibility she learned to master and excel at, but deep down was not her one true desire.

Staring her friend head on, Caroline opened up. "Truth? There are days where I just want to get in my car, drive, and just keep driving and never come back. Don't get me wrong, I love the girls, I do, but I feel like I'm living another woman's life, and the idea makes me feel like a fraud, like a stand-in. And feeling like that then leads to feeling guilty because two young innocent lives were saved. I just wish…I hadn't been the vessel chosen to save them," she lowered her eyes to her lap.

Bonnie rose and walked around the table and sat next to her friend. "It's all right to feel that way, Caroline. You didn't ask to become pregnant with Jo and Alaric's twins. You didn't ask for your boyfriend you were madly in love with to be chased by a single-minded huntress up and down the US. It's okay to feel anger about the life you had to give up and the one you were forced to accept."

Caroline flashed a here and gone smile, sniffled. She rubbed her hands down the length of her jeans. "I hear you, Bonnie. It's just…" she fell back against the couch, "so many things have been done to us we never asked for. Where's our breaking point? Have we already exceeded it? Has it yet to come?"

To that Bonnie had no answers.

"I do miss Stefan," Caroline confided.

"You know he loves you."

"Yeah," the vampire mommy deadpanned.

"It's better to know that then not know where you stand with someone," Bonnie murmured, a faraway look in her eyes. "With Damon, besides feeling guilt, I don't know what he feels. I don't know if he ever really cared about me the way I cared for him."

Sympathy flushed through Caroline. "You know he does, Bonnie. Guilt can only carry you so far in fixing something that's broken. Love is what helps to endure until things are right. He could have easily gone back to sleep after helping to get Stefan's scar removed, but he's still awake."

"Yeah, but there's no guarantee that if…"

"When…" Caroline interjected knowing precisely what her best friend was going to say.

"If a cure or solution can be found for me. Say there is and I live on to see another year, I don't know if he'll give up and go back to sleep."

"Something tells me that he won't ever leave or abandon you again."

Bonnie wagged her head in disbelief. "It doesn't matter either way," her chin jutted up a fraction. "I'm with Enzo. What Damon does with his life after this latest crisis is over is none of my business."

Skepticism darkened Caroline's features. Bonnie noticed and as a result her back muscles tightened.

"Talk to him," Caroline advised. "You're never going to move past anything with Damon if you don't, and you need the closure."

"I got closure three years ago."

"Then why are you still holding on to your anger? You need to find that reason, Bonnie. You won't be truly happy until you do."

She couldn't love someone who rather check out as a backwards way of protecting her over someone who actually weathered several storms by her side. I just can't, Bonnie thought as she stared at her reflection in the guest bedroom around one o'clock in the morning. But Caroline was right. She needed to know so she could really close the book on this chapter.

2.

Damon Salvatore counted slowly until the rage in his head dwindled down to a throbbing tick that matched the one pulsating in his jaw. In between counts he took a sip of bourbon. Drinking was more habit than anything else as bourbon was supposed to help curb the cravings. What it did was make the cravings worse. Achieving intoxication was impossible so bourbon's only true purpose was to give his mouth something to do.

He studied the glass, the liquid inside. There was nothing unique to it. Not the glass and certainly not the bourbon. Damon just needed something to distract him because if his mind began to wander like it had been the last few days, he'd replay certain scenes he never wanted to see ever again. If he could help it.

His fingernails were caked with blood; he could smell it all over him. Typically that wouldn't bother Damon in the least, and his tongue would be itching for a taste, but his thirst wasn't the same. Nothing was—well apart from certain people being pissed at him. That he could deal with in due time.

Out the corner of his eye, he spied his handwritten letter addressed to Bonnie that she ruthlessly thrust into his chest after making some grand spiel about Enzo being by her side when she dies. He snorted repugnantly because if it weren't for her precious boyfriend she wouldn't be dying. Yes, Damon could see that Enzo thought he was being innovate in keeping Bonnie cloaked from The Armory, but seemingly forgot drugs came with a list of side effects, and if he had stopped to check…

Damon drank more bourbon to settle his grumbling stomach. What's done was done, and all he could do was find a way to save Bonnie's life _again_ even if she wanted him to burn in hell. Dense, far from it, Damon understood perfectly why Bonnie hated his guts. He felt the same way after learning the truth about Katherine. Yet underneath his pain, humiliation, and hurt of Katherine's deception, was love. He loved Bonnie but she couldn't see it and he knew he was at fault because he did a cowardly honorable thing. At least in his mind.

"I'm going to make it right," he vowed to no one in particular because no one was around.

Snorting, Damon surmised he should get used to being alone. Stumbling from the couch he went upstairs in his newly rented property a few miles from Enzo's safe house, to shower.

3.

She could kick herself for being here, but oftentimes being where you least wanted to be was exactly where you should be. She was here for closure and nothing else.

Staring up at the darkened house, Bonnie let out a puff of air. Crossing to the door, she pushed down on the lever and crept inside.

Damon was the first thing she saw. He was seated in an armchair in front of the hearth, hunched over. He gave no indication he heard the front door open, that he was even aware he was no longer the lone occupant. Bonnie thought for a moment he might be asleep, but she heard him sigh, saw him shift and then, he was looking right at her.

Bonnie fortified herself against that tortured expression he had donned since showing up at her room at the institute. Tonight it was just as intense.

The silence stretched from seconds to a painful minute and she had come no closer than the edge of the carpet in the living room.

"Here to yell at me some more?" Damon inquired hoarsely.

Bonnie crossed her arms and felt walls going up. She hadn't come here with a confrontation in mind; at least not one that entailed yelling and throwing things. She wanted to confront Damon about his mistakes, about how his choice really broke her. He could say his peace, but she was already resolved that it wouldn't budge the mountain between them. She couldn't afford to let him back into her life and most importantly back into her heart.

Vampires had the luxury of switching off their humanity. She didn't have that amenity.

"No, Damon I'm not here to yell at you. In fact I'm tired of yelling."

"Then…what are you doing here?"

"The truth. I want the truth."

He looked away, giving her his profile, "My truth is in the letter and if you had read it…"

Bonnie's hand shot up to silence him. Her eyes closed and opened again momentarily. "After everything we've been through, I figured I deserved to hear the truth from your _mouth_ and not in a Dear John letter. You owed me that much respect. You wanted to waste your life in a box and I had been more than willing to die for my friends—and had—I can get that. But the fact you didn't tell me goodbye…that you could so easily cut me out of your life like you never even gave a shit…"

"Bonnie…"

"Just tell me why you left!" she screamed. Her vision blurred as she tramped the urge to cry.

Raven strands of her hair fluttered as Damon used his vampire speed to stand right in front of Bonnie bringing a sharp wind with him. "I left to protect you and Stefan! I took myself out of the picture so you and my brother would stop putting your lives on the line to save mine. With me around you weren't going to make it to eighty years old, let alone twenty-two." Damon took a breath to calm down. "I'm sorry that I abandoned you, that choosing desiccation hurt you. I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to protect you."

"Protect me from what?" Bonnie moistened her lips, "The Amory showing up at Whitmore a week after you desiccated with a task force to bring me in?"

Damon's brows arched, nostrils flared but he had nothing to say.

Bonnie was feeling pretty superior as she twisted the knife, "You weren't there but somebody else was. Someone else got me out. Someone else kept me hidden. Someone else _protected_ me."

Repressing his snickers, Damon's eyes narrowed, "Oh, yes let's give Enzo an award for giving you anti-magic pills that is poisoning you to death."

"At least he was there for me which is more than I could say about you."

Damon couldn't believe he was hearing this but he wasn't exactly surprised by Bonnie's blind faith in her boyfriend. She wore the same goggles when she had been with Jeremy Gilbert who did jackshit to save her life on the many occasions the chance arose. She wanted to prop Enzo on a pedestal that was her right. Yet there was one key fact she and her latest boy toy were overlooking.

"I find that utterly convenient," Damon said conversationally. "Did Enzo also tell you he was the one who put the idea in my head you would never be safe so long as I was around? That my continued presence in your life would equal your perpetual endangerment?"

Bonnie blinked.

Damon smirked. "Not so smug now are we? Yeah, Enzo might have been there for you, Bonnie but he won't be the one to save you. _I_ will and you know that's a check I always cash," Damon promised self-assuredly.

Bonnie leg bounced. "It's not your job to save me."

"You think saving you is a job? It's never been a job to me, and I'll tell you why, because you mean too gotdamn much to me."

Bonnie's eyes went heavenward. She skirted around Damon and parked herself in front of the fireplace, her back to it. "Oh, I mean too much to you? You have a funny way of showing it."

Damon turned, the tendons on the side of his neck protruded as he growled, "I made a mistake, Bonnie. A stupid, boneheaded mistake. Do you remember what you said to me in Amsterdam?"

Confusion puckered her visage. "I said a lot of things to you in Amsterdam in between the jokes you cracked about me choking on my food or being hit by a train."

Damon swallowed at that acrid truth. He had made light of Bonnie still being alive as he adjusted to living without Elena. He had been an unnecessary asshole and he regretted it.

He banked that for later as his bare feet moved across the rug bringing him closer to Bonnie. "What did you say to me after I pulled you out of the way of that van?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Bonnie sighed.

"What did you say?!" Damon's voice cracked like lightning.

"I said that you're stuck with me. I said that you could either love me or hate me but you're stuck with me."

"I do."

"You do what?"

"I love you!"

Bonnie clammed up. It was said that the effects of love could feel like the effects of poison. At the moment Bonnie was unclear on what it was that was driving her to feel nauseous and like the room was spinning. Love or poison? She wanted to sit down but doubted she'd make it to the couch. She locked her knees so she wouldn't wobble or tip over. Ringing started in her ears, but she heard the sound of her heart booming above that. Blood rushed to her head and drained to her toes.

Her back went completely straight as Damon loomed over her. He was so close Bonnie could count his individual eyelashes, and each time he exhaled his breath brushed across the bridge of her nose and the hills of her cheeks.

Bonnie's mouth had gone dry. She knew the wise thing to do would be to take several steps away from Damon. The heat she felt emitting from him came from slinging bourbon. She could faintly smell it on his breath. His hair was finger combed; several strands fell across his forehead. Damon's cheeks were pinker than usual, and tiny whiskers were poking out around his sculpted jawline. Bonnie hated she was noticing these things about him, these trite things, but maybe she was taking notice because she had gone three years without being this close to him.

She jerked slightly when Damon's hand lifted, came into view. Her lips parted on an inaudible sigh, eyebrows drew together and flattened as her cheek was cupped by his palm.

"You think I would subject myself to your scathing looks and commentary if I didn't love you?"

Bonnie fought through her bewilderment seeking out a single word to latch on to that she could hurl at Damon. She wasn't given a chance to respond.

"You said you kept my letter for three years to remind you who to trust, but there has to be another reason. You didn't want to let me go, Bonnie. Say. It."

Her mouth watered and her pulse fluttered temptingly beneath the fragile layer of her skin. Bonnie stared at Damon's dilating pupil and without her magic she felt like she was being compelled, but she was in total control of everything. Her thoughts, her actions, her feelings.

Now she really couldn't move since his right hand joined the left in framing her face. Her chest rose rapidly and Bonnie was screaming at her feet to bolt, yelled at her hands to thrust him away. Feeling and mobility bled out of her and she could only stand there with Damon so close, his deep voice softened with familiarity.

"You don't want to let me go because you love me, too. Deny it," Damon challenged.

His words hung in the air like a scarf ready to be dropped to start a race.

"Dammit," she whispered. She couldn't. She couldn't deny it.

TBC.

 **A/N: Thoughts? Thanks for reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: All righty, so wow I really didn't expect the response this story has generated. I know I say that all the time. Things can be hit and miss so I'm always kind of surprised when a story resonates. But thank you to everyone who reviewed, read, added to your lists. I hope this follow-up does Chapter 1 some justice. Enjoy!**

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4.

Her tongue was not twisted in knots. The same couldn't be said about her stomach. Bonnie pulled at Damon's wrists. His touch was distracting. He backed up a step but there was no backing down. That was plainly written within every defiant line of his body.

But then Damon began to stare at her beseechingly. Bonnie pinned her lips together even as the words pounded their fists on the lid screaming to be let out. No. She couldn't risk that and what it would mean, or how Damon would perceive and interpret her recitation of those words. Vulnerable, she had spent too much time being vulnerable in front of him with little to show for it.

"I need to go."

Bonnie managed to reach and get to the front door and opened it. It was slammed shut.

"We aren't done."

He was too close to her. So close every time he took a breath, Bonnie felt his chest expanding. Damon's methane blue eyes drilled into the back of the obstinate witch's head. Her small shoulders lifted and rose occasionally as she waffled with her next move. Damon was prepared to make it for her.

Exasperation and a myriad of other things propelled Bonnie to turn around. Inches. They were separated by inches. Like a tabloid seeking out the latest celebrity hookup, Bonnie knew Damon wouldn't leave this alone. Wouldn't leave her alone. He was stubborn and petty like that, planting himself in your face leaving little choice but to deal with him. Damon could wear you down like a pair of heels, but she knew how to get him to back off.

"Elena."

Damon stared at Bonnie in confusion. "What about her?"

"Shouldn't you be sitting around twiddling your thumbs that my impending death is right around the corner, and you'll be reunited with your one true love?"

She was cute when she was trying to deflect, Damon thought. He quickly nixed her preposterous idea in the bud. "You think I'm going to have any kind of a happy life without you in it?" Bonnie squinted. Damon said, "Stop hiding behind Elena and Enzo. We're dealing with you and me and no one else."

"I'm just stating facts that can't be denied."

"No, they can't but they're irrelevant right now."

"But you want to know what is relevant…I made my life an open book to you, Damon and yes, you've been there for me in a clutch, but you also took advantage of my friendship for selfish ass reasons."

"I'm not denying I didn't and that it was wrong. However, it's in the past and I can't change it."

"How convenient," Bonnie muttered flippantly.

"I learned from my mistakes," Damon asserted.

Bonnie snorted and tightly crossed her arms. "Have you? What have you learned? That it's fucked up to treat people you care to claim about like pawns to get your way? That it's shitty to tell your best friend you'd lose your mind if you lost her, but easily walked out of her life without looking back? Hmm, what have you learned?"

He said nothing for a moment, apparently mulling over Bonnie's questions. He paced a little while periodically biting into his lower lip. He paused in front of the tiny witch. "I learned that redemption comes with a hefty price but that I'm ready to pay it."

"And you wouldn't constantly have to shoulder the cost if you didn't fuck up all the time."

Damon's smile was grim. "What exactly did I fuck up, though? Funny how everyone thinks the current status of their lives is my fault. I can man up and take responsibility for hurting you and Stefan, but I'm not going to carry everyone's cross.

"You can look at me with those fiery eyes for walking out on you, but where's that anger toward the fact you're dying? In the three years we haven't seen each other, what have _you_ learned, Bonnie?"

Damon was entirely too tempted to add that she still didn't know how to pick a boyfriend, and was being too blasé over the fact a deadline had been placed on her life. He slapped his tongue with a filibuster.

Bonnie scoffed. "I don't have to explain myself to you, and I think we're done here."

She made another attempt to leave, but Damon was having none of that. He whisked Bonnie away from the door and had her braced against the far wall.

"Damon!"

"Let's get things back on track," he ignored her shrill voice. "I love you, Bonnie."

She thought the effect of hearing those three gargantuan words would have lessened the second time around. They were still a punch in the gut and made things around Bonnie swoon, or was that her?

Defeat was a garment Bonnie hated wearing for any length of time. If she had any hopes of leaving this place lugging around a lighter load when it came to her anger, then she was going to have to open up. Speak her truth and move on.

Damon was trying to persuade himself that if Bonnie said she loved him he would take it in the context of friendship and nothing more. He would not confuse nor compare how she proudly stated she loved Enzo with how she'd say it to him.

Apparently the practice of lying to himself had not gone out of style.

Bonnie inhaled a breath and gazed unwaveringly at Damon who was pensive and anxious. "If I want to get past the hurt, pain, and anger, then I need to say it. I loved you."

 _Loved_ , Damon gulped. Past tense. Really not good.

"You weren't just a friend or brother to me," Bonnie turned misty eyed as her throat began to burn to hold in her deepest, rawest emotions. They wouldn't be denied. They came out in a torrent. "You were the most important person in my life. I didn't have anyone else but you, and a fact that would depress some, it made me…happy because you made me believe we were family. In a lot of ways you were…you were my soulmate, Damon."

His mouth went dry. Damon blinked. Soulmate. The magnitude of it slammed into him like a bat upside the head. He saw it and understood and it even clicked, but _now_ the depth of Bonnie's hurt, her hatred of him made such heart-wrenching sense.

He broke her heart. Chills wove through him like thread.

Damon saw the light bleeding out of Bonnie. The timbre of her voice changed, lowered, became slightly menacing.

"But you took the piece of my soul that loved you and desiccated it right along with your body. When I was told what you were planning to do…I thought maybe you were pulling the same stunt you pulled at Jo and Alaric's wedding. How you made me believe you were leaving me to die but then turned around and saved my life. I thought you might be pulling that trick again. Seeing you there in that storage unit with that coffin…you were serious this time."

Damn, he didn't even think of that, she'd correlate the two. "Bonnie…that's not…"

She smiled sadly, ducked under his arms. Bonnie stared at him. "You thought you were doing a noble thing? Well, your nobility blinded you to the damage your leaving would cause," Bonnie wiped mucus from her nose. "In spite of everything…I loved you…I still do," she admitted on a shaky breath. "But I hate that I do. Because loving you…proves to be a _very_ lonely thing."

Bonnie wiped her face as she stomped to the door, threw it open, and melted into the night.

Damon's ears popped at the deafening silence in the house. He really didn't know what to do. Like a kid lost in a store, Damon could only look at the closed front door.

"FUCK!" Shuffling to the coffee table, he snatched his phone and called his brother.

"Hey, what was the name of that witch who helped you in New Orleans?"

5.

Midnight…the witching hour. Budding tree leaves shook against the wind, the security light flickered as it was swarmed with bugs. Things were quiet and isolated which Bonnie recognized she should hate because she had spent way too much time being both. She scurried inside the small cottage that she now began to view as a dollhouse and not in a good way.

Waltzing inside, Bonnie braced against the door, hands behind her back. Jittery, her skin felt electric. Dread churned in her belly, and though she cried on the way home Bonnie had smiled a few times, too.

She examined the cottage where she learned every crack in the walls, deflects, and flaws. Stared at the couch where things with Enzo crossed a line Bonnie usually reserved for a boyfriend, someone she loved. She had taken a chance that night to entrust Enzo, and it seemed her investment had been paying off until bombshells were lobbed on her head.

Bonnie willed her thoughts to go blank. Henry Ford said thinking was something a lot of people didn't like to do, and for the time being Bonnie was one of those individuals. Thinking made her believe she had betrayed something very important and special to her. Thinking would eventually lead to acting, and Bonnie couldn't afford to act on what she was thinking.

Biting into her lip, Bonnie headed to the empty bedroom.

She flung herself on the bed. Waited for the gravity of exposure to flatten her completely, but it never came. The reason she felt so bad was because she felt good. It was a dichotomy that repelled and congealed. Being around Damon made her think of bad things. Getting everything she held inside that went beyond just the three years he slept was like finally having an orgasm. Could this be the closure she sought after? Intuition said no. Another door had been busted wide open.

Unearthing her cell, Bonnie called Caroline who answered on the fourth ring. "Hey, is this a bad time?"

"No, what's going on?"

"I did it. I talked to Damon."

"Yeah, how'd it go?"

Bonnie worked her shoulders out of her coat, returned to staring aimlessly at the ceiling. "I revealed more than I wanted to say to him, but he needed to know the truth. He may have…told me he loves me, and I…said the same." Silence. "Hello? Caroline, you still there?"

"I KNEW IT!"

Bonnie had to pull the phone away from her ear. She listened as Caroline quelled Ric's concern something was wrong, and came back on the line with a level of hyper-activeness that reminded Bonnie of their days in high school.

"Okay, okay, okay break it down for me."

"For the record I didn't mean it in a romantic sense and neither did Damon."

"That you know of."

Bonnie clucked her tongue. "Has everyone suddenly forgotten the chick that's lying in a coffin that Damon pissed off an entire universe of people to be with?"

"Have you forgotten that said chick told him not to sit around and wait for her? Next excuse."

"Why do you sound happy about this?" Bonnie said.

"I'm glad you asked, my dear. Mainly…Alaric spilled the beans that Damon tried to pump him for information—slyly about you. He was the one who told Damon where to find you. Alaric may have also given a very detailed description of Damon's face when he was informed you were dating Enzo. Puckered like he swallowed a glass full of werewolf pee…"

"Gross."

"Dismayed like he lost his chance."

Bonnie's stomach rumbled.

"Extremely vexed like he wanted to tie Enzo into a pretzel."

That bit almost happened if she hadn't intervened when she did as Damon made his typical threats that years ago would have actually made her smile.

"Resolute," Caroline was saying as Bonnie snapped out of her musings, "that he wasn't going to let things go. Not the behavior of a man who has platonic feelings for his BFF."

Bonnie sighed. "Whatever Damon's feelings are…I'm not encouraging them. Platonic or otherwise."

"Bons, now you're forgetting something. If Damon didn't let a little thing like his _brother_ stop him from pursuing the supposed girl of his dreams, what makes you think a guy he can't stand would deter him? You gave him ammo by saying you love him."

Bonnie's eye twitched.

"But fill in the blanks of what you guys talked about because I know a lot more was said," Caroline prodded. "Come on! I need this. The women I hang out with their problems…they think people are talking about them when in fact no one is talking about them."

"That's the problem," Bonnie giggled amazed she could find humor in anything at the moment.

"Exactly. So tell me everything."

Bonnie did. Opening up, peeling back the layers exposing her thoughts and innermost fears to someone who wouldn't try to use the information to emotionally manipulate her at a later date. Bonnie could be honest with Caroline on a level she wasn't, at times, honest with herself. With the time ticking on her life expectancy hiding things in the dark, burying them underground would be pointless.

"How do you honestly feel about what he said, Bon?" Caroline asked the moment Bonnie finished her story. "Did hearing Damon say he loves you hurt you or heal you?"

The bed squeaked as Bonnie rolled to her side. That was a good question. "It hurts that he claims to love me but had no problem with never seeing me again, but…it heals to know he does feel more for me than surface emotions."

"And Enzo? Are you going to tell him what you and Damon talked about?"

Bonnie heard the front door of the cottage open and close and the vampire in question calling her name. "I have to go, Care. Enzo's back."

"All right, we'll pick this up later. Love you."

"Love you, too."

Enzo appeared in the threshold a second after Bonnie hung up the phone. He leaned his shoulder into the frame, tossed his keys from hand to hand. Ordinarily she'd rush into his arms for a kiss or kisses, but her ass was stapled to the bed. She couldn't move.

Bonnie foolishly wondered if Enzo would be able to read her and know what was said between her and Damon verbatim. "Hey, I'm going to take a shower."

She forced a smile, scooted out of bed, and locked herself in the bathroom. Bonnie lost her smile. She stripped, started the shower. Once steam billowed, she climbed in after putting on her shower cap. The heat from the water stung her, and she yelped, fumbled with the knobs until the water was warm and not scolding.

As she lathered up, Enzo joined her unbeknownst to Bonnie. She yelped again the moment his hands came into contact with her soapy shoulders. Bonnie jerked around and almost asked what was he doing, but looking down his body she caught on.

"I hope you don't mind but it's been a while."

Caroline, Bonnie was hearing Caroline in her head asking if she had made love to Enzo since Damon came back. Judging by his erection he was looking to rectify the situation, but not a single drop of sexual desire stirred within Bonnie. She didn't think anything was wrong with her libido. It was… seeing Enzo naked collided violently with hearing Damon say he loved her.

A reel began playing in her mind. Bonnie knew she had been slightly putting on an act to prove she was much happier with Damon no longer in her life. Had it been wrong to use her boyfriend in that regard even if he received the benefit of her attention and affection, and certainly made no complaints about it? Bonnie took pride in the fact she wasn't the type who played games. However, she had taken great joy in making Damon as uncomfortable as possible seeing it as a form of retribution.

Well Damon wasn't here, not physically. He hovered like a spectre, a ghost who refused to find peace and move on. He was wedging himself in her personal affairs, was becoming an eclipse, and Bonnie had no idea how to make it stop. How to stop or reseal the cracks surrounding the heart she carried for him.

Enzo's brow went up as Bonnie continued to stare at him like she had no clue what the hell he was talking about. The last time they had been intimate was eight weeks ago. He missed her, but he wasn't an idiot. He could see what was happening, could see Bonnie drifting away even if she was doing it unconsciously and very, very slowly.

"I think I'm clean," Bonnie announced, pulled Enzo's arms away, rinsed.

He studied her, had felt her stiffen at his touch. "What's the matter and don't saying nothing because I know something is."

"Besides dying for the millionth time, I'm peachy." Enzo winced. Bonnie hopped out of the shower.

Towel wrapped around her, she made it to the door. The shower turned off as soon as her fingers gripped the knob.

"You were with Damon tonight."

Bonnie's grip slipped off the doorknob. She faced Enzo looking nothing less than caught. "Excuse me?"

Enzo stepped out of the claw foot tub soaking wet, eyes widened maniacally. "I caught a scent of his _uber_ masculine cologne on your clothes."

"You're sniffing my clothes now?" Bonnie switched her weight on her damp feet.

"No, you left them scattered on the floor like you always do. I went to pick them up and there you have it. You saw him tonight."

It wasn't a question, and it wasn't asked in an accusing manner to Bonnie's ears, but she felt like she was being accused of sneaking off with a guy she had been forbidden to see.

Bonnie white knuckled the knot in the towel mostly to keep her hands from shaking, "Just go ahead and say what you think is going on so I can tell you you're being delusional and get to bed."

Enzo placed one foot in front of the other as he advanced closer, "So it's delusional for me to think my girlfriend is in love with her best friend she's been trying to cover up for the last three years?"

The ringing in her ears started again. Bonnie's flesh prickled with goosebumps. She hoped her face was expressionless but she doubted it. "That's what you think I've been doing? Covering up things?"

Enzo laughed drily. It didn't escape him Bonnie completely glossed over the 'in love' part. "No, you've been good at vocalizing but you pick and choose what to share."

"Everyone does."

"So why don't you tell me now what he had to say for himself."

"He said he loves me."

Enzo suspected as much. Having that confirmed made red, spidery veins appear in his sclera. He blinked and his eyes were back to normal. "You believe him?"

"I do."

"And you? Do you love him?"

Lying and cheating were two things Bonnie hated and she wasn't about to do either. If these were to be her final days…she wouldn't shove Enzo into a position she did Jeremy by withholding the truth because she didn't want to ruin their time together.

Oh, God, Bonnie thought. The parallels between what she did when the other side was falling apart, leaving Jeremy knowing she'd never see him again, and Damon desiccating….and she had said goodbye to Jeremy over the phone, and Damon had written her a goodbye letter…

Pain speared through Bonnie's head.

Enzo literally saw her having an existential crisis.

In her defense, she hadn't had a choice in leaving, in dying. Damon did. Still, were her actions that much different even though she couldn't control the circumstances? Bonnie asked of herself. Jeremy had been hurt and felt betrayed because he had been in love with her. Bonnie felt the same because she was…

Bonnie held Enzo's unwavering gaze and confessed, "I do. I do love Damon."

The news didn't shock Enzo but it didn't make him shout for joy either. He cracked his knuckles, dug his tongue into his cheek.

"But it doesn't mean I don't love _you_ ," Bonnie added. If she loved Enzo it meant she couldn't be _in love_ with Damon, right? She was desperate enough to believe that.

"Love," Enzo pulled her shower cap off, watching her hair tumble and cup her face which he then traced the shape of her jaw. He had loved Maggie, Lily, and Bonnie but had been clear of the reality of the situation involving each. Enzo figured it was time to stop living in pretenses.

"I was convenient and we both know that. A convenient confessor, a convenient friend, a convenient fuck. And though I don't doubt your feelings for me are genuine, your bleeding heart for Damon never ran out of blood."

Bonnie was unable to say anything to the contrary. She couldn't argue that everything unfolding was happening unexpectedly because life was seldom done on anyone's terms. Enzo saw the truth of it in her half-lidded orbs. He nodded, maneuvered around Bonnie, and slammed out of bathroom.

He began rifling through the dresser for a clean shirt and jeans to throw on. Bonnie came to stand just shy of the bed, watching, witnessing her boyfriend thrust his arms and legs into clothes.

Enzo pulled out a duffel bag. He threw a few items inside.

"You're leaving? Enzo."

Plopping on the edge of the bed, Enzo put on socks then his boots. He stared at Bonnie for a long minute then looked away to focus on tying his laces. "I think what you really want to know is…do I love you enough to let you go to choose who honestly has your heart…to not be upset with your choice if it isn't me. What was the purpose in going to see him?" Enzo tossed out.

"I needed to talk to him. I needed closure."

"Did you get it? Did you get your bloody closure?" he asked almost snidely.

Bonnie blew out a hard breath. She hadn't gotten closure since things were far too complicated to be resolved in a single conversation. After the latest revelation things were far more convoluted than she originally thought.

"No, I didn't," she replied honestly. "Regardless, my issues with Damon shouldn't affect us."

He laughed tiredly. "But they have from day one."

Bonnie's gaze narrowed. Her voice pitched. "Then why pursue something with me if you figured my feelings were so set they'd never change?"

"Because I thought they might! Because the more time we spent together the less time you talked about him. But no. You carried him around in your thoughts, in your heart, in that fucking letter. Just admit it, Bonnie. I'm Damon's placeholder."

She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. Bonnie dropped the towel—momentarily distracting Enzo—and reached for her robe that was hanging from the bedpost. She threw it on, tied the sash.

"If that's how you see yourself then nothing I say will change that."

Enzo stared at her like that was the absolute wrong thing to say.

"Can you answer me something?" she sauntered to Enzo and stood between his legs. "Did you tell Damon that if he continued to be in my life I'd end up dying in trying to save him?"

He craned his neck taking in her features with glassy, whiskey colored eyes, "Yes, I said it and you and I both know it's the truth."

"And yet he wasn't the one who gave me pills that's killing me."

Enzo was taken aback by Bonnie's cold delivery of those words. His folly was killing her. There was no getting around it. He may have rubbed it in Damon's face he hadn't been by Bonnie's side, and rubbed it in Bonnie's face, before they were together, that Damon didn't care about her on the same level she did for him, but ironic it would be him who would shorten Bonnie's lifespan. Guilt, he was carrying around a large quantity of guilt.

Enzo stood, Bonnie stepped back a few paces. "I'm going to do what I can to make things right. When everything is over, when you're safe we'll revisit this conversation. In the meantime, there are more names to be crossed off Rayna's list. I'm going to make myself useful."

He grabbed his bag, stopped in front of his girlfriend who speared him with an indecipherable look. Enzo smiled in spite of the knife twisting in his guts. Lowering his head while tilting her chin, he caught her cheek since Bonnie turned her head away.

"When there's no one to perform for it's much harder to keep up pretenses, I see," Enzo said.

"Not all of it was an act."

"Just enough of it to sell the story?"

Bonnie folded her arms, arched a brow. "You were playing a part, too."

"You're right. I was." His boots made not a sound as he drew closer to the door and farther from her. Enzo was stalling, hoping Bonnie would plead for him to stay. It never happened.

6.

The high sun would blind him if it weren't for the UV protection of his designer shades. For the moment its imposing rays were a mild annoyance, but an annoyance he didn't mind tipping his head back every so often to soak in its warmth. One foot resting on the chrome fender of his car, the other on the ground, Damon sat on the hood, waiting.

Operating on an hour of sleep, Damon was thankful for the occasional chilly breeze. It kept him awake. After checking on Rayna, he eyed the little cottage, listening carefully to discern Bonnie's heartbeat. Their talk fresh on his mind, he already suspected today would be another brutal day. Possibly even worse than Day 1 of Bonnie's quest to shove her new love life in his face. Now that she knew he loved her and all, Damon was not expecting Bonnie to go easy on him.

His ears twitched at the sound of the front door of her hideout opening. Damon watched intently as Bonnie emerged then hesitate.

Facing him last night was one thing. With him looking downtrodden, crestfallen, and browbeaten by his stream of poor choices, it was easy to keep certain walls erected. This morning, Bonnie was seeing Damon as he presented himself: cocky, ready to throw a Molotov cocktail into your holiday plans, ready to jump head first into the fire to pull you out.

And he loved her.

A fact she went over and over in her mind that she only got an hour of sleep.

Bonnie stepped completely out of the house and shut the door behind her.

Damon nearly asked where was Sir Loyal Mutt, but knew that wouldn't go over well. Instead, he picked up the takeout cup of coffee beside him, and stretched it out to Bonnie who arched a speculative brow.

"Caramel hazelnut made with half and half and two sugars."

Bonnie nearly tripped. He had finally gotten her favorite coffee right, and somewhere a point went up on a scoreboard. "Thanks," she took a careful sip to avoid burning her tongue.

"Where's Enzo?"

"Do you actually care?"

"No."

Bonnie's mouth opened, closed, and opened again as she finally said, "He's hunting alone. Figured more ground could be covered if we separated," pushing that word out of her mouth gave her pause. Their argument ended on a 'to be continued', a cliffhanger, but deep down it felt like the beginning of a break up to Bonnie.

Damon noticed her gaze went a bit opaque. "Bonnie?"

She wagged her head. "Enzo's following up on a lead on how to reverse what's been done to me." Bonnie relayed the details of a text message he sent an hour ago. When she inquired if she could tag along, he said it would take too much time to double back to pick her up, and reluctantly suggested she get in contact with Damon so they could continue doing Rayna's job.

"He has a lead?" Damon took off his shades and hung them from the collar of his shirt.

"Yes."

"Would it be," the raven-haired vampire withdrew a file folder, leafed through its contents. "The Magi Healers?" Damon looked at Bonnie from beneath his lashes.

"The Magi Healers? No, he made no mention of them." Bonnie hobbled over the uneven ground and sat beside Damon on the hood.

Her warmth touched him; her scent immediately usurped everything else. He cleared his throat and continued filling in some blanks. "Werewolves were the nuisance in Central Europe during the 15th century. There was a pack that remained in wolf form apart from one night out of the month."

"I read about them," Bonnie informed. "They were cursed by a witch name Minerva just for the hell of it. She liked pushing the boundaries of her power until she was sacrificed by her daughter to the horned god for more power."

"And I thought I had family drama," Damon quipped. "Interesting," he drawled a moment later to mask he was impressed Bonnie had done her homework. "So in 1692, a group of physicians sat out to create a hunter who shared the werewolves' strengths without becoming a snarling creature that fed on human flesh. So the Magi Healers made someone like Rayna. That of course led to hundreds of experiments being conducted using the hunter's blood after they had a success."

"Are you telling me they created an anti-magic pill?"

"Back then it was a tonic."

"Did they," Bonnie's heart pounded as she glanced furtively between the printed documents in Damon's hands and his eyes, "did they create an antidote?"

"They did, but that's where the trail goes cold. All knowledge of the Magi Healers seemingly vanished until sixty-five years ago. Their research was discovered by a family of hunters called the Argents. One so happens to be alive today who can hopefully point us in the right direction. Go and pack a bag," Damon shut the file.

Bonnie's nose wrinkled, "For what?"

"We have to go to California."

Bonnie's automatic response was to tell Damon to pump his brakes. California was three thousand miles away. They were beefing. She didn't know where things were with Enzo…but seeing as how seconds couldn't be spared, Bonnie dashed inside, grabbed the bag she kept packed for emergencies and locked up the cottage. She slid into the passenger seat after dumping her duffel in the trunk.

"That was fast," Damon said and fired up the engine.

"It was already packed."

For several miles they said nothing to each other. Damon stole peeks at Bonnie when he could. She did the same when she presumed he was focused entirely on driving. The radio was on, but the volume was cut down so low it was nothing but a murmur of noise to Bonnie. She wrung her hands, played around with her phone, but the quiet, the tension, it was making her antsy.

"Where'd you learn any of what you told me in only a few hours?" she blurted at last.

Damon nearly shot off a load in relief she said something first. "Freya Mikaelson."

"Who?"

"That's what I said," he guffawed. "Apparently she's the oldest of the Mikaelson trolls—,"

"—you would know how to spot a troll."

"—yeah like your boyfriend."

"Fuck you!" Bonnie swore.

Undeterred, Damon cajoled, "Oh, come on. You literally walked right into that one."

Bonnie bit into her cheek until she bled to keep from smiling.

"Like I was saying, Freya popped up in their lives six years ago. Anyways, she's a witch who helped Stefan when he was in New Orleans, made an herbal paste for his scar to keep him off Rayna's radar. Stefan was nice enough to put me into contact with her hoping she might know something. I have a hard time believing everything we've seen is the first time it's ever happened. You can't be the first witch poisoned by a hunter's blood. Freya, without pulling teeth, faxed all the information she had after I explained to her the situation."

"That was…awfully nice of her. To help Stefan…to help you."

"She helped Stefan because she liked the hair. Me? She wasn't helping me so much. I told her I'm doing everything in my power to save _the_ last Bennett witch," Damon took his eyes off the road, smirked at Bonnie who cut him a sideways glance, "after that she was only too eager to help."

Irrespective of the times she's heard of the Bennett clout, it still surprised Bonnie her family was so renown. Yet for all their power they invariably drew the short stick.

"You know," Damon thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel, "I did ask if there was anything she could do for you."

"Yeah?"

"She said if California is a bust and the scabs start to appear…come see her."

Bonnie nodded and looked at the passing scenery. What she took away from that…Freya would provide the witch's form of euthanasia. Bonnie gasped when Damon's fingers coiled around hers. Her head whipped to look at their intertwined hands then at Damon who was staring straight ahead.

"You're not dying," he said as if reading her mind. "Not with me around."

It wasn't until Bonnie was strapped in her seat beside Damon and up in the air that she hadn't called Enzo to tell him where she was going.

7.

They had a layover in Kansas City that ended up being a cancelled flight. The airport gave them hotel vouchers though it wasn't entirely necessary bearing Damon could compel them what they needed. As per usual, Damon sniffed out a local dive bar. As luck would continue to have it, the twosome walked into a bloody massacre in progress. Bonnie's phone began ringing. Rayna was calling to let them know what they were already seeing. One of the hell stone vamps was chomping around Kansas City, feeding its insatiable hunger.

Damon cracked his knuckles and got to work. For his ass kicking efforts he left with two bottles of bourbon and wooden shrapnel lodged in his shoulder via a makeshift stake. Bonnie was currently picking the splinters out with tweezers.

"Hold still," she reprimanded for the twenty-fifth time.

Damon scowled at Bonnie through the bathroom mirror of the dingy motel they checked into. "I think you're deliberately pinching me with those damn tweezers."

She concealed a smile and went back to meticulously patching him up. Knowing she was smiling, Damon did as well, but it turned into a grimace the second another sharp, piercing pain made his shoulder blades draw together.

Bonnie's cell, perched precariously on the edge of the sink began ringing. She blindly reached for it, but her fingers bumped into the device and sent it flying into the open toilet.

"Shit," she cried. It landed face up and the name emblazoned on the touchscreen had Damon snickering.

"Apropos."

"Shut up." It was Enzo calling.

There was no way she was fishing her phone out of a toilet that had seen who knows how many asses.

"Damon…?"

"Hellllll fucking no, Bonnie. I'm not digging your phone out of the crapper. I'll buy you a new one."

Right as Bonnie reared to stab him with the tweezers, a painful burn manifested on the back of her hand. She hissed. The tweezers fell to the ground with a soft clang, and she stared, bug-eyed, at the reddish scab spreading to about the size of a quarter.

Damon, frowning, pivoted to face Bonnie. "What's wrong?" his question was answered as Bonnie held up her bruised flesh.

Stomach meet floor.

The estranged friends looked at one another saying so much without saying anything at all.

"How much time…?"

"A week…at the most," Bonnie informed. Once the scabs appeared, seven days, if that, would be all she'd have.

Damon stepped into her personal space in the already cramped bathroom. "If I have to run the rest of the way with you strapped on my back…we're getting to California _tonight._ Move. Get your things."

For a moment Bonnie was stunned. "Your shoulder," she said lamely.

Damon craned his neck to stare at his bludgeoned shoulder. "We'll deal with it later. Nothing is more important than getting you the help you need, Bonnie. Nothing. Let's go."

"All right," Bonnie nodded then cleared her throat as she pointed at her floating cellular device.

Damon sighed in resignation. The things he did for love.

 **A/N: You know me. I gotta infuse my own mythology into things. I don't know what the show has planned to save Bonnie. I've come up with my own solution that's borrowing slightly from Teen Wolf. Now that Bamon has stated the obvious that they love each other, how much longer until they realize they are IN LOVE? Won't be long now, kittens. Thank you for reading! Please, review.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This was deleted. Sorry about that. It's not a new chapter for those who've read it already. I failed to mention that this story would be a 4-part series, so one one chapter after this and its a wrap. Thank you to those who reviewed, added to your lists! Happy Mother's Day. Enjoy.**

* * *

8.

He would argue that every hour was an appropriate hour for a drink. In most situations she would find herself agreeing, but also believed there was a time and place for everything. For the moment she was willing to make an exception. She wanted its burning taste on her tongue. Needed the scorch of it coursing down her throat. Wanted it to numb every piece of her.

Bonnie splashed cold water on her heated face; ignored the flavor of salt staining her cheeks. She rubbed her neck, blew out a breath. As much as she didn't want to look, her gaze fell to the horrible scab on the back of her left hand.

There was no worse and there was no better. Being dead, being an anchor, being in a prison world, abandoned in a prison world…Bonnie couldn't remember the last time she had a year of fucking peace where the highlight of her day wasn't making it from one hour to the next. Her hand shook and she reared back to punch it through the mirror.

"Bonnie," Damon knocked on the door, inadvertently stopping her. "We need to go."

"All right," she squinted at her reflection, dabbed her face with a towel.

Leaving the bathroom, Bonnie noted that Damon had donned a fresh shirt; his cell was wedged between his ear and shoulder. She tried to discern who he was talking to. His lips moved but she could barely hear the words he spoke. Stefan, Bonnie assumed. Damon was probably telling Stefan the scabs were appearing, and he needed to hustle to cross off as many names on Rayna's ever increasing list that he could.

Coming to a stop at the full sized bed, Bonnie shrugged on her motorcycle jacket then reached for the handle of her bag. Her grip slipped when she picked it up and some of the contents spilled out. Annoyed, she bent to retrieve her clothes and toiletry items, yet she really scrambled for the book that lied face down on the shaggy carpet.

Damon got to it first, flipping it over. Bonnie avoided making eye contact as she stuffed the rest of her things back into the duffel. Silently she fumed and felt her ears burning.

"I'll call you once we touch down in California, brother," Damon ended the call. His thumb ran over the well-work cover of the tome in his possession.

Bonnie felt his penetrating stare drilling a hole in her and, bending under pressure, she glanced at Damon who, sure enough, was wearing that patented expression of curiosity and confusion.

"My book," he drawled. "Why…"

"I wanted to return it to you," Bonnie cut him off. Explaining why she had it in the first place she hoped to evade. Despite what she said about carrying his unopened letter as a reminder on who to trust, how could that be if she carried said letter around in a book Damon earnestly loved? "Let's not make this weird," Bonnie turned away and zipped up her bag.

It was already weird and they both knew it. Bonnie toting his letter around was one thing, but his book? She told him that he didn't get to say goodbye and it would appear she couldn't say it either.

"Why did you have it?" Damon questioned.

Bonnie shrugged. "Why did you have my grimoire the first time I died? Like I _said_ ," her tone was biting, "let's not make it weird or make it into a bigger deal than what it is."

Damon shuffled until he stood behind Bonnie with no real idea as to what he wanted to say. Words poured out of him nonetheless. "I would say this is a pretty big deal. The girl who hates me carries around my letter in _my_ favorite book. A girl I'm sure had ample opportunity to burn both, but she didn't."

Bonnie whirled to face him. "Maybe I'm a masochist, but what I'm not in the mood for is this conversation."

"That's too bad," Damon crossed more into her personal space forcing Bonnie's neck to crane completely back. "You carried around my book for the last three years. You held on to something that I love…"

"You didn't leave me much else."

"Well, Bonnie…you need to know not everything is as one-sided as you think it is."

Damon went to his bag, ruffled around. Once he had what he needed, he forked it over. Bonnie took it from him, turned it over.

She was staring at a photo of herself wearing an oversized black leather jacket standing in front of an ornate red gate. Her short tresses were windblown and the person who snapped the picture caught her in the midst of a smile. She had wondered where this picture had disappeared off to and shouldn't have been surprised it ended up in Damon's possession.

"I had that with me," he said.

The flummoxed witch deadpanned, "As a cautionary tale."

"No, because you weren't the only one not okay with not seeing their best friend again."

Damon pulled the photo free and carefully tucked it away. He wanted to tell Bonnie it was the picture he stared at as he called her cell phone, and left her a voice mail message after she sent him back home, sacrificing her chance to do the same. He snorted at the irony. She hadn't heard his message and hadn't read his letter. His messages, proof that he loved her eradicated. One, by her drunk, whoremongering ex-boyfriend who disconnected her phone for good. The other, by Bonnie's refusal to read what she presumed to be sarcasm and lies.

One thing Damon promised himself that he wrote in his letter was that he'd never let Bonnie, the proof of her existence fade into obscurity.

"I never…had a friendship like the one we had, and sometimes you don't realize the magnitude of something because you start to think it'll always be there. I did that to you a lot."

Bonnie crossed her arms, the cotton of her shirt rubbed against her scab. It was painful. She winced and dropped her arms. "Yeah, you did. But we honestly don't have time for any of this right now."

"We don't. But that doesn't…"

On cue, Damon's phone began ringing. He released a frustrated grunt that turned into an eye roll. "What?"

"Where's Bonnie? I can't get a hold of her."

"Her phone is out of commission at the moment. Your name scared the poor thing to jump into the toilet."

"I don't have time for your bullshit, Damon," Enzo seethed.

"I don't have time for this conversation."

"Bonnie. Now. Put her on."

"Oh, would you look at that. She just left the room to start the car."

As Bonnie motioned for the phone, Damon tossed her the keys to the rental and stabbed his pointer toward the door. Being of a stubborn sort, Bonnie shook her head and reached for the phone only for her hand to be batted away.

"Damon," she snapped between clenched teeth.

"Just spit out what you need to say," Damon addressed Enzo while ignoring Bonnie.

"Enzo!" she screamed.

Call it remnants from his childhood where he enjoyed seven years of being the lone child, Damon hated sharing especially when it came to attention. He and Bonnie had been having a moment, and leave it up to her buzzkill of a boyfriend to mess it up.

Bonnie pinched his side. Damon squelched the yelp that almost came out. The stern and deadly look boiling in her orbs motivated Damon to hand over the phone. But not without hitting the speakerphone button.

"Enzo?"

"Are you all right? Where are you?"

"I'm…the first scab appeared thirty minutes ago."

Enzo cursed and made more promissory vows to which Damon showed his opinion on by scrunching his face. His features smoothed out as he heard the incredulity in Enzo's voice as Bonnie enlightened that they were chasing a lead and would soon be on a plane to California.

"When were you going to tell me this?"

Bonnie banked the rumblings of guilt, their last conversation too fresh on her mind to inspire anything but remorse, "I was going to but got distracted. Have you found anything?"

There was a pause. "I'm doing everything in my power…"

And Damon resumed tuning out the sound of Enzo's incompetence, however, his ear twitched to alertness once more when he heard:

"…the perimeter sensors around the safe house were tripped," Enzo sighed. "I've called Rayna half a dozen times with no answer."

Dread sunk in Bonnie's stomach like a stone.

"That can't be good," Damon chimed in.

"You think?" Enzo spat in return.

"I'll get Donovan to check it out. Lord knows he hasn't been pulling his weight on anything but being salty."

Bonnie had spaced out trying think of anything but the worst case scenario. For that split second she was running to that spot in the woods where the eclipse touched down as prison worlds melded one within each other. For that split second she was the anchor trying to siphon her friends out of purgatory and back to life. With time winding down, slipping through her hands like grains of sands, was her back up plan fading?

Damon confiscated his phone and gently pushed Bonnie to have a seat on the bed while he finished dealing with Enzo. He could see that she may have physically been in the room with him, mentally she was gone.

"Since I'm in a generous mood, in addition to knowing Bonnie would want you to be in the loop, I'll text you when we have something viable."

"I feel this shouldn't need to be said, but considering who I'm dealing with…don't forget whose girlfriend you're with, Damon."

The vampire in question snickered lowly. "Don't forget what Salvatore you're dealing with, slacker."

"You might have managed to con Elena from Stefan, but history won't be repeating itself."

Damon grinned evilly. "And what do you know? My special brother said the exact same thing. But you're right. History won't be repeating because Bonnie is nothing like Elena, you're sure as hell nothing like Stefan, I am me," he shrugged, "and as I told our MIA huntress I eventually get what I want. Happy hunting, Enzo."

Damon hung up effectively getting the last word. Goading his former friend shouldn't feel as good as it did, but it did and later he'd examine why or perhaps just enjoy it for the simple pleasure it gave. Being it was the one variable he could actually control.

The dark-haired vampire began thumbing through his contacts. He glanced at Bonnie who seemed resigned and something else he couldn't name. Turning his back on that expression because he refused to believe they lost their backup plan if this Magi Healer thing turned out to be a bust, Damon called Matt.

"Don't talk, just listen."

"I don't have…"

"I said listen! I need you to get to Enzo's safe house as fast as you can. I'll tell you where it is so please don't bother wasting breath in explaining you don't know where it is. Rayna's there. I need to know if she's still alive, injured, or what. Call me as soon as you know something. I'm not fucking around with you, Donovan. And your friend, Bonnie, remember her? She's depending on you to get over your vampire hating ass and do this to save her life. Got it?"

There was a pregnant pause before Matt grudgingly agreed. "Yeah, give me the address."

Damon rattled it off, ended the call. "Let's go…"

His words trailed as he finally noticed the door to the room was ajar. Grabbing his bag, book, checked to make sure they weren't leaving anything important behind, Damon sprinted out of the hotel. He ran to the parking lot to find Bonnie behind the wheel of their rental, headlights beaming.

He folded his lean body into the passenger seat. They stared at one another. "You okay to drive?"

"I need to or I'll just be thinking a hundred things I don't want to think about right now."

"Like what? Maybe…it'll help to purge."

Bonnie put the car into reverse, corrected, and drove off. Checking out be damned. "I just want to get to the airport or drive straight to California."

"You worried the Armory may have gotten to Rayna?"

"Yeah."

"I am too," Damon muttered quietly. "She's not our only shot."

Bonnie said nothing. Just drove. "Maybe…maybe you should go back and I'll head to Beacon Hills."

"No, we're sticking together."

"But you could be…"

"I know what I could be doing. I could be elbow deep in vampire guts right this second. I left you once, witchy, I'm not doing it again."

Bonnie's chest constricted. The interior of the car was dark; it didn't impede her from seeing the seriousness marring Damon's features.

"And I know you don't want to hear that," he continued, "but I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not going to let you give up on yourself because you wouldn't give up on me. You told me to end it in the prison world…don't expect me to say it you now."

She bit her upper lip because hearing Damon say that gave Bonnie comfort. "I know you wouldn't."

"Damn right, I wouldn't."

Bonnie drove hell for leather to the airport, scored two tickets on a flight to Las Vegas where they'd connect to a flight headed to Los Angeles which was fifty miles south of Beacon Hills. Having a goal in mind made it easier to stay focused. However, the walls Bonnie long ago erected, those were being torn down. She hated the loss of them because it meant the ice around her heart was melting.

9.

Thirty-thousand feet in the air, soft snores hijacked Bonnie's attention from the harsh glow of the MacBook screen in front of her. Swiveling her head to the left, Damon was knocked out cold, completely dead to the world. His head was angled toward the window, mouth parted. She had never seen him sleep, not even in the prison world. Typically Damon had been wide awake buzzing with energy that was both infectious and tiring.

Her mouth kicked up at the corner. She was thinking of grocery shopping in an empty store where Damon sarcastically informed her she talked in her sleep. Bonnie stared at him wondering if he might mumble a word or two, but other than blowing out air, he made not a sound.

Clearly he was exhausted. Bonnie could see it now and understand. He had been going nonstop since Stefan woke up him. Plus, it couldn't be easy to work alongside someone or a lot of someone's in Damon's case that hated your guts. A sliver of compassion softened Bonnie's heart as she could now process everything Damon was doing for her and had done, and not just within the last few days, but in the years before he desiccated. When it came to saving her life he had been instrumental every single time.

" _You think I'm going to have any kind of a happy life without you in it?"_

If there was one thing Bonnie knew, her life had been pretty freaking miserable without Damon in it.

Repressing a shuddering breath, Bonnie resumed her internet search on the Magi Healers. What she found so far was skeletal knowledge at best. The Magi she was looking for weren't the Three Wise Men from the Bible, nor the ones who hunted mummies in _The Mummy_. She had also combed through the research Freya had laundered to Damon, which entailed a disjointed timeline of events and circumstances delivered by word of mouth.

"Can I get you or your boyfriend anything?"

Startled by the voice and how close it was, Bonnie automatically closed the laptop, and made eye contact with the flight attendant who stood in the aisle slightly bent over.

"Um…" Bonnie stuttered for a moment, flicking her gaze to Damon to find him still fast asleep before looking at the woman again. "No, he's not my boyfriend. We're friends," she forced a cough. "But I could use some ice."

"Okay, ice coming right up," the attendant hovered.

Bonnie waited for her to say something else, but inwardly sighed as she saw the woman's sepia cheeks becoming an interesting shade of pink as she cast a furtive look at Damon. The tired witch had a feeling the attendant was wondering if it would be impertinent to ask Bonnie for Damon's number, thought better of it, and shuffled to other passengers asking if they needed anything.

The little witch found her gaze wandering to the slumbering vampire. Asleep, Damon seemed unimposing though it couldn't belie that your breath would catch if he were to open his eyes and stab with you the full force of his probing gaze. The angle of his jaw and nose were sharp, dominant, his winged eyebrows matched the onyx color of his hair perfectly. His pale pink lips were full enough to make kissing him worth it. The musculature of his body advertised he had stamina for days.

Why the hell am I thinking this? Bonnie immediately stopped.

She ignored the fact her thighs had grown a bit hot.

Thankfully her ice was delivered. She popped out a few cubes and crunched them between her teeth. Delving back into her research, Bonnie read line after line of text. A name popped out at her that was eerily similar to the name of the witch who cursed a pack of wolves to remain in lycanthrope form twenty-nine to thirty days out of the month.

Minerniva. And according to sources, she had unparalleled powers of persuasion and those powers may have been harnessed by the Magi.

The plane underwent some mild turbulence, and the Captain's voice came over the PA to announce the obvious.

The rattling plane managed to wake Damon out of his nap. Nose scrunched, lips pulled down at the corners, Damon surveyed his surroundings bleary-eyed and cranky. He was still on the gotdamn plane. Thumping his skull on the head rest, he yawned, smacked his dry lips together and eyeballed his seat companion.

"Bonnie?" her name came out in a breathy whisper.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

Slumping further in the chair, Bonnie chewed more ice. "I was trying to find out more on the Magi Healers. There's not much to go on, but," springing up once more, her fingers began flying, typing in a new item to search. She got a hit. Began speed reading.

"Of course," she murmured a minute later.

Damon leaned closer, reading over her shoulder. His proximity made Bonnie stiffen with awareness. "Found something?"

She remembered to keep her voice low. Sound traveled in small spaces.

"Umm…remember the name of the witch who cursed that pack of werewolves? Well, her name is eerily similar to Constantine's first wife Minevrina. There's no record of her death, if she had been divorced from Constantine or sat aside so he could marry his second wife Fausta for political reasons. She seemingly disappeared."

"So you're thinking the 57th emperor of Rome…his first wife was a witch?"

"It's a stretch but I remember…from the files Enzo stole, The Armory does have a necklace Constantine's first wife gave to him made of lapis and pearls. What is lapis often used for?" she gave Damon a haughty look.

"Daylight rings."

"Mm-hmm. Plus it didn't take much to change your identity then. Minervina could easily become Minerva. You and I both know…when a witch is determined to live…she'll find a way."

A thing began to happen neither was fully aware of. They were smiling at each other.

"Let's say your ambitious theory is correct," Damon scooted closer though there was little space between them to be had, "do you think she's what Alex wants?"

"I doubt it. There's gotta be something or someone else in there. If we had time I'd question Virginia again. Get a better understanding of why she freaked out on me about the vault."

"Freaked out is putting things mildly. She tried to shank you with a broken piece of glass."

Bonnie's smile fled, brows flattened. "How do you know?"

Damon scratched the nape of his neck. "I may have overheard your conversation with Enzo when I showed up at your room."

What he wouldn't say is that he had loitered for a solid fifteen minutes trying to find a shred of courage to turn the corner and march to Bonnie's room. The sound of her voice incited a debilitating case of nerves that left Damon extremely inarticulate. It had been bad enough he had no idea what the hell to say to Bonnie. It certainly didn't help matters their reunion had an audience.

Everyone on board was told to put on their seatbelts. The plane was landing. Both were relieved for different reasons.

10.

Beacon Hills was a quiet, postcard town where lacrosse was all the rage and teenagers rarely made it home. It could be Mystic Falls' twin, Damon thought sardonically. However, there was a level of systematized mania that constantly had Damon cricking his neck to relieve tension.

Finding an Argent hadn't been hard. In fact, it had been _too_ easy which disappointed Damon on a level that if spoke aloud would make him seem he suffered from some form of brain damage. He calculated the fastest way to find someone would be to check with the local sheriff's office. The building was deserted with the exception of a clerk who had been too engrossed in a Sudoku puzzle to take much notice of anything. However, the clerk did provide Bonnie and Damon with pertinent information which made closing the gap to finding a member of the Argent family a lot simpler.

Damon took command of the wheel. He picked up some very strong and funky vibes of the town the deeper he drove into its territory.

"How are you doing?" he asked Bonnie who had been relatively quiet from the moment they touched down.

At first it was a headache that bothered the somber witch, but her nerves felt pinched and her fingertips tingled. She couldn't get comfortable in her skin. It felt paper thin and like at any moment it might shred apart. Her eyes hurt to the point it seemed the tiny blood vessels within were being pummeled with a meat tenderizer. Several more scabs had appeared, now blazing a trail to her forearm.

"I don't feel good."

Damon, grim, pressed harder on the gas. He whipped out his vibrating phone.

"Yeah, Donovan?" he answered.

The deputy's heavy breathing made Damon's jaw tighten. "I'm here at Enzo's safe house along with half the fire department. The place has been torched."

"Fuck."

Bonnie went taut with alarm. "What?"

Damon shook his head as he continued to listen to Matt.

"Yeah, so there's no telling if Rayna is alive or dead, and if we do find a body, we'll need dental records. I'm sure those don't exist for her," the deputy said.

At the same time this dead end news was being relayed to him, Damon's other line beeped. The number was unknown but he had a feeling who it was.

"Thanks, Donovan. Call you later for an update," Damon switched to his other line. "What?

"Damon Salvatore," Alex St. John purred smugly in the vampire's estimation. "I got your number from Rayna…hope you don't mind."

"Alex," Damon squeezed the steering wheel, " _what_ did you do to her?"

"Put a bullet in her head. She no longer had a purpose to fill. Or did she? I know you and your friends have been going around killing the rest of the phoenix stone vampires in hopes of transferring Rayna's last life to Bonnie. Nice but faulty plan at best."

Bonnie snatched the phone from Damon, pressed it to her ear. "Listen _bitch_ , I could be dead very soon so now isn't the time to play games."

Damon didn't even try to fight off his smile, loving the fire he sensed in his little witch.

"Bonnie…this is a surprise. Here I thought you'd be with Enzo. Should have known since we have him in our custody."

Fear, Bonnie tasted fear. "You have Enzo? If you touch him…"

"Oh we're going to do more than just _touch_ him. He deserted and there's only one way we deal with deserters in the Armory."

The engine of the SUV made a noise like it was running out of gas. Damon didn't swerve, but his eyes narrowed.

"You could be lying about having Enzo."

There was shifting and soon Bonnie could hear Enzo cursing in the background that was followed abruptly by the sounds of his screams. At that she paled.

"Now, here's where I make a deal," Alex came back on the line. "You want your boyfriend back unarmed? You turn around, come to the Armory, open the vault. You have my word we'll do what we can to find you a cure. Your first scab should have appeared by now and if it has…you know that means you have _maybe_ a day or two left. No need to squander them on a continual goose chase. Tick-tock, Bonnie. Oh, and since I have you on the phone, might I give my condolences? Your cousin Lucy is dead."

Throbbing, Bonnie's temples were throbbing. "Lucy. Is. Dead?"

"Enzo didn't tell you? Tsk. Come to us, Bonnie and we'll help you. See you soon."

Her cousin was dead. Rayna might be dead and with her the rest of the phoenix stone vamps she was still connected to. Enzo was captured. The scabs were growing in number…this was turning out to be a very shitty day in which nothing was working out for her good.

"They'll keep him alive until Alex gets what she wants," Damon broke into her thoughts. "We've played this game a million times. He's their leverage and if they kill him, you won't have any reason to open that stupid ass vault."

"I know it's just…everything's so fucked up." Bonnie's smile was strained with poignancy.

"I know."

She inhaled and released it slowly. Rarely did Bonnie put herself above helping someone she loved. But since she was closer to one goal than the other her conscience only cringed microscopically as she said, "We stay this course. You're right. They won't kill Enzo."

"He'll understand."

Bonnie nibbled her thumbnail.

"I'm sorry…about Lucy."

Saying 'thanks' was silly and stupid, Bonnie thought. Lucy was a virtual stranger, family but a stranger. She had mixed emotions about hearing of her death, and that Enzo kept it from her. She felt she should mourn, but Bonnie was so close to being emotionally tapped out, she didn't have the energy to act accordingly.

Things continuously piled up.

Bonnie lurched forward, slapping a hand over her mouth. Damon hastily pulled over seeing she was about to be sick. She barely had the door open before dry heaving on the asphalt. Damon stared at her worriedly wishing he had a bottled water to offer her. Instead he rubbed her back.

She stilled, feeling something stir as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The curvy witch stumbled out of the truck, tripped down the embankment—arms pinwheeling slightly, and sauntered into the woods.

"Bonnie? Gotdammit."

The vampire was fast on her heels demanding to know just where the hell did she think she was going. He was ignored of course.

After walking aimlessly for miles, that's what it felt like to Damon, but they probably wandered no more than 700 feet when they came to the largest tree stump either had ever seen.

But it was no ordinary tree stump. It was a powerbase that drew in the supernatural. Damon could hear it fucking whispering to him. For Bonnie, it was like this statute of nature flicked on the switch of her magic.

Damon heard the howl a second before Bonnie sensed a werewolf barreling toward them. His fangs descended but magic beat him to the punch.

"Motus."

A gust of high velocity wind sent the leaves on the ground flying in the air. A solid, invisible force slammed into an approaching one, sending the would-be assailant soaring backwards and landing with a near bone crushing thud on the unforgiving earth.

Before he could comprehend Bonnie's magic was back…before it even processed in _her_ mind, Damon spotted a pair of glowing red eyes.

Squinting, Bonnie could barely tell the age or gender of the werewolf, but it became clear as he prowled closer. She blinked because for all intents and purposes, it was a teenage male with very hairy sideburns, and claws for nails. His face was wolf-like, the rest of him human attired in jeans, a T-shirt, and jean jacket. He growled revealing his impressive set of fangs, top and bottom. His nose twitched and he seemingly ruled Bonnie out as dangerous despite her display of power a moment ago, and centered his attention on Damon.

"Easy, doggie," the vampire crouched even while his hands were lifted in surrender. "No one is trying to pee on your tree."

Seconds later a high beam flashlight cut through the darkness stinging his retinas and Bonnie's. A gun that shot .50 caliber rounds was leveled right at the vampire's head.

"He smells like death," Scott McCall announced to the man creeping on the scene.

"Not what we were looking for, but he'll do."

"You know," Damon qualified, "I'm not feeling the discrimination."

Bonnie pinched the bridge of her nose.

11.

Chris Argent was not what Bonnie expected him to be. She kind of had this image of Kris Kristofferson in _Blade_ in her head. Old, long gray shaggy hair, unkempt appearance, face riddled with lines and sun damage. What she was seeing was a fairly attractive man in his mid to late forties, a neatly trimmed beard fringed with gray, and a pair of aquamarine irises that glowed silver from a distance. He was obviously physically fit, cut out to do the job that didn't offer the best life-expectancy policy.

She and Damon broke down the situation once identities and purposes of traipsing through the woods were exchanged.

Chris holstered his weapon as he listened to the young woman Bonnie talking to Scott while the vampire Damon stood close to her, arms folded doing his level best to appear intimidating.

Scott angled his body to include Chris in the conversation, his features back to normal revealing how truly handsome he was. "Have you ever heard of the Magi Healers?"

"Yeah, I know who they are or I should say were. My question is," he stared at the newcomers, "why do you want to know?"

"I'm dying," Bonnie spoke plainly and showed her scabs. Both Scott and Chris frowned. "Long story short I've been taking anti-magic pills to stay off the radar of this group called The Armory. The pills were made from the blood a vampire huntress, Rayna Cruz."

A flicker of recognition lit Chris' face. "She's still alive?"

"That we don't know," Damon chimed in. "Not for sure anyways."

Bonnie stepped forward. "My friend," she made a vague gesture toward Damon, "found out information about the Magi Healers, that their research was discovered by _your_ family, and they may have created an antidote that could help me. Please, if you know anything."

"I've read their research," Chris admitted. "The major plant used to cure the toxicity of the anti-magic tonic is aconitum, more specifically yellow wolfsbane."

"Great where can we get some?" Damon clapped his hands together. He wanted to move along because he got the feeling they were about to ambushed by whatever Chris and the kid Scott were hunting.

"The other ingredients to the antidote can be found in the spice aisle at the local market apart from the yellow wolfsbane. It only grows every seven years on a mountainside in Southeast Asia. The last of it I had…I gave to my father," Chris looked at Bonnie with regret and sympathy. "I'm sorry."

She was sorry too and that was the last thing she heard.

12.

 _[_ _ **screams**_ _]_

 _[incoherent talking]_

 _[sound of footsteps rushing…]_

 _[moving…]_

When Bonnie managed to open her eyes…she was cradled in Damon's arms. His eyes burned with unshed tears. "What happened?" her words slurred.

"Your nose started bleeding and you passed out. But we're taking you somewhere to get you help. Just hold on."

The young woman who was no worse for wear a moment ago was suddenly deteriorating at a rapid speed. More scabs emerged, converging along her neck. Bonnie felt the poison burning through her blood. Apparently her magic was its accelerant to kill her faster.

In her mind's eyes she saw gates opening. The rest of the world…Damon's face began to fade.

"It's okay," Bonnie blinked sluggishly, curled more into Damon's chest. "I'm not scared. I don't want to go but if I have to…"

"Stop."

"…can't keep me forever…Salvatore. You have to…"

Damon kissing her forehead killed whatever Bonnie was about to say.

Two hot tears rolled down Bonnie's cheek. Her eyes shuttered close to savor the feeling. "I forgive you, Damon. Even when you piss me off, you'll always be…my number one."

"Bonnie," Damon's voice cracked. Everything cracked.

She flinched slightly when something wet dropped on her cheek. "You're crying," Bonnie was astonished because she never thought he'd ever cry over her.

Damon's laugh was broken. "I _hate_ that it hurts so much and that I made you feel how I'm feeling."

"You'll be all right. Elena will…"

"Elena isn't you!" Damon snapped. "She's not you."

Despite the cold, warmth shattered within Bonnie. She felt so sorry for Damon for herself that they were here again. "Here's your last chance…for a nickname…make it good."

Damon laughed again but the sound was off like he lacked the energy for it.

He couldn't do this. Damon thought he was strong enough to let Bonnie go. That if it came down to the inevitable he'd let her go and find some measure of peace. But the selfish part of him that couldn't bear the thought of her being gone for good reared its head to keep her with him by any means. She'd hate him for eternity, but she'd be alive to hate him.

Just as Damon decided to turn Bonnie into a vampire, a new voice, a feminine voice that was partially raspy tickled the witch's eardrums. She smelled electricity, and as her eyes shifted she could just barely see the Asian girl keeping stride with Damon.

"Just keep her talking. We're almost there."

"Who are you?" Bonnie asked.

"Kira…Yukimura."

"Oh. You have pretty eyes," Bonnie grew faint thinking Kira's eyes had glowed like the sun.

13.

She was floating like a fluff of dandelion. No sense of purpose or direction. Her body was free of pain and all its appetites. She quite literally had not a care in the world. Well, that wasn't really accurate. There were those whom she loved ardently and unconditionally that she didn't want to leave behind, but the choice was settled. She had lived her life. Now though, their faces splashed across her mind, fleeting images, the color and clarity dulling as time moved at a sluggish yet harried pace.

A piece of her that seemed so small in this wide open…endlessness ached at the separation. She would miss them; however, death was as much a part of life.

At the moment it seemed life and its mysteries was whispering its secrets in her ear, revelation upon revelation engulfing her, filling her, creating her into a new entity. Into what, she couldn't say. The old her, the pieces that were diseased, aged, broken, battered began to chip and fall away like paint. She was being renewed.

Was this how death was truly supposed to go? No wandering in a colorless world hoping to encounter another lost soul to make a connection with? No reliving the same day over and over until you sought out a permanent death by your own hand?

She hummed in approval as she began to see the first stars of the heavens. Clusters of galaxies that floated like fruit in a gelatin dessert. The colors…they were divine and spectacular she wanted to swim through them. She gasped although no real sound escaped her metaphysical mouth. She wasn't exactly in a body. She was light, air, wind, a tease of a bigger vessel. She bobbed happily until…

Hooks grabbed on to her. Metal clamps with barbed ends. That's what it felt like. She blinked—or tried to. The hooks burrowed down and she tried to fight them off. No.

No!

Backwards, she was being pulled backwards. And with the speed, her thoughts went in reverse and she couldn't stop the torrent. Pain, loneliness, disappointment, and anger came back; emotions she had shucked after taking that final indrawn breath. Chills stole her heat, racked what was left of her existence. Weight, crushing pressure came next like she was being stuffed into a package she wasn't meant to fit.

What the hell was going on?

" _WHAT?"_

Damon, she'd know that voice anywhere. And he was upset about something.

Someone was doing compressions on her chest, warm lips covered hers, air was forced into her mouth.

"You have to decide, Damon now!"

Decide what? Bonnie wondered as her brain fought for every drop of oxygen it could get. She disappeared for a fraction of a second but was resuscitated, gasping, wheezing, chest aching.

"My immortality," Bonnie faintly heard Damon say. "I'll give you my immortality. Just save her life."

Chapter end.

 **A/N: Feelings? Thoughts? There's a rumor swirling Damon will become human. This just my take on how that might happen.**

 **Now, this coincidence was by sheer luck that the name I chose for the witch who cursed a werewolf pack would be very similar to Constantine's 1** **st** **wife's name. Her name is actually Minervina. I usually tune out Krusty when he talks, and if I'm wrong welp this is my established headcanon, that the necklace he was gushing about at the Armory belonged to Constantine. If he said that, great and everything falls into alignment. I won't be divulging into any of that in the next and final part. My focus is purely Bamon. Let me know what you think of this. Until next time…**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: For those interested in how this short mini-fic wraps up. Enjoy.**

* * *

14.

 _Before…_

He couldn't relax not even with his head resting against the seat. He tried to picture the landscape and what it might look like during the day. Green fields, rocky hills the color of pewter, the occasional deer or fox, maybe even a coyote peeking from the chartreuse foliage waiting for the right moment to dart across the tight road.

He thought of slender brown arms lifted above her head, wind-blown locks, silver bracelets catching the sunlight temporarily blinding him as she rode shotgun in his Camaro. He thought of how she'd smile and roll her eyes at his jokes. Shove his shoulder. Grow quiet and reflective, a sign she was comfortable with him. Damon's fingers nervously twisted a stand of Bonnie's hair then checked her pulse. It was there. Faintly. His fingers hesitated when he felt a new patch of scabs right on the tendon of her neck.

"How much longer?" he growled.

"We're almost there," Kira announced as she raced her SUV up an incline so steep you would have thought they were in a shuttle headed for the moon.

Finally the truck stopped moving. Kira hopped out, opened the rear passenger door and stepped aside as Damon carefully emerged bringing an unconscious Bonnie with him. He swept her up in his arms and hurried after Kira who trotted up a pair of stairs that led to a traditional Japanese house.

Kira knocked on the sliding wooden doors and announced their presence in her native language. "If they decides to help are you willing to barter with something extremely important? They're not interested in money," she said.

It didn't matter to Damon. He just wanted Bonnie well. He nodded curtly and hugged Bonnie tighter to him.

Someone finally parted open the doors. Kira bowed. Damon mimicked her actions half-heartedly too impatient to yield to custom. He listened as Kira explained the situation. The burly lady in front of them eyed him with the usual repugnance he was used to. When she paid Bonnie the same kindness, Damon had to refrain from snarling at her to knock it the fuck off.

He stiffened when the lady reached out to touch Bonnie's limp wrist and quickly drew back her hand as if it had been bitten. Her shrill voice grated on the vampire's ears, but she was yelling to someone loitering in the house.

Kira thanked the woman, slipped off her boots, told Damon to remove his and Bonnie's shoes.

The ceiling of the antechamber was decorated in gold metal filigree with bright red gossamer silk woven through that draped to the floor like tassels on a uniform. Everywhere you could think to look there was red. Flowers, linens, candles. It was like walking through the heart of a dragon which was probably the idea.

The little old woman hustled them to a storeroom and started bustling around. She gestured for Damon to lay Bonnie on a wooden island cluttered with various plants growing in mason jars. She moved some aside to make room.

Damon got Bonnie situated, taking off his jacket, balling it up into a makeshift pillow. He stuffed it under Bonnie's head.

The woman conferred with Kira about something who turned and muttered quietly to Damon, "How good are you at not revealing anything, expression wise?"

He quirked a brow. "I'm okay at it. Why?"

"You'll see. Try not to stare," Kira nodded and the woman pushed open a hidden door disguised like a set of shelves.

Their benefactress shouted to whoever lived behind that hidden wall sending Damon on a miniature flashback of the day he spent reliving in the Phoenix stone. He shook it off, clasped Bonnie's hand that was growing colder by the second.

"We're going to get you fixed up, BonBon, just hold on a little longer."

He heard feet clopping up a set of stairs.

Damon would give himself credit for keeping a straight face. He had seen burn victims, people with rampant facial tumors, and those suffering with smallpox. None of it prepared him for _this_.

It was a man; that much he could tell. However, the entire left side of his body looked like moss and bark were growing from pus-filled sores. His nails were black, fingertips stained, and Damon was fairly sure the man was blind. The woman debriefed him on whatever it was she felt when she touched Bonnie. He glanced at the aforementioned witch barely clinging to life before his eyes volleyed between Kira and Damon.

"He's Mr. Nakanishi…a healer. The woman, Oren is his caretaker. If he agrees, he'll siphon what's killing Bonnie out of her body…for a price," Kira relayed.

"What's the price?"

"Oren sensed that she's a witch," Kira explained carefully. "Mr. Nakanishi wants her magic."

"WHAT?!" Damon shook his head furiously with every intention of picking Bonnie up and leaving when he heard her take her last breath.

Kira heard it too. "Her heart stopped," she shoved Damon aside, vaulted up on the table throwing out meaningless words to him in Japanese while shouting in English that she was starting CPR. "You have to decide, Damon now!"

Paralyzed. Damon couldn't make that kind of a decision for Bonnie. He looked furtively between Kira administering chest compressions and breathing into Bonnie's mouth, stared at the blank faces of Oren and Mr. Nakanishi, looked at Bonnie again, saw Kira trying to restart Bonnie's heart. On it went on a cycle leaving him with an _enormous_ decision to make.

How many times had he been right here? Right on the cusp of losing Bonnie. Amara dying before he could be sure Qetsiyah's spell was complete. Bonnie sending him back with an arrow stuck in her abdomen bleeding to death.

They couldn't go through this again. He wouldn't be able to make it if she died. His conscience tsked and chided him: if you hadn't left she wouldn't be in this position. If you had sucked shit up, been a friend to Bonnie, a brother to Stefan, none of this would be happening.

"DAMON! You need to decide!" Kira shrieked as she continued to administer CPR.

At the sound of Bonnie wheezing, his mind was made up.

Damon swallowed and said, "My immortality," he met Mr. Nakanishi's gaze. "I'll give you my immortality. Just save her life."

Three pairs of eyeballs blinked at him.

Things happened quickly giving him no chance to change his mind. Damon was told to hoist himself on the table next to Bonnie who, for all intents and purposes, was half-dead.

It hadn't really crossed his mind what he was forfeiting. Bonnie deserved what was in his ability to give her and more, and that became his hymn. Though doubt lingered. And lingered, and grew louder and louder.

Mr. Nakanishi shuffled around the table placing himself at Bonnie and Damon's heads. His disfigured hands touched their foreheads. The vampire did his best not to flinch, but he twitched and settled, took one final glimpse of Bonnie, intertwined their fingers, closed his eyes.

 _Do you think it will hurt?_

 _I don't kn—_

Their chests rose like yeast symbiotically. Bonnie's mouth opened, Damon's molars clenched. Hands latched together so tightly both of their knuckles had gone white. A vacuum, a rush of eternity was sucked out of him like juice from a lemon. For Bonnie it was an infusion, revitalization, a renewal.

Twin tears rolled down their left cheeks.

It was done.

* * *

15.

Taking that first resuscitated breath, confused, jittery. She lifted her hands, examined them. The scabs were still there but the longer she looked the smaller they became. They were shrinking, fading away as if they'd never been there. She touched the back of one hand, moved to the other, and back again. The tiny ridges, calluses, blemishes were no longer raised like braille detailing the poison that ravaged her body. Bonnie touched her neck, the center of her chest and met with smooth skin.

She was whole. Clean.

Seeing Damon beside her at first made Bonnie smile, but it fled once she looked at him through bleary eyes remarking he was paler than usual and sweaty.

She shook him to find he was too warm for a vampire. "Damon?"

He moaned in response but didn't wake up. Bonnie glanced at Kira, unsure of who she was being she was partially unconscious when they met, noticed she was tense, worried.

"What happened to him?" Bonnie rasped.

"There was a trade," Kira begun gravely.

"Trade? W-what kind of trade?"

"In order to save you, something had to be sacrificed…Damon gave up his immortality for you."

For ten seconds Bonnie didn't blink or exhale. She understood the words perfectly, but the weight was lost. The seriousness. Damon would never…

Only he had.

"WHAT? No, no, no, no." Her heart swelled and corroded. She cried as she used what little energy she had left to sit him up. "Damon? Damon!"

Drowsy, heavy-lidded, he stared at her after coming to. Her tiny hands cradled his cheeks.

"Why? Why would you do that? Give up something so important to you…for me?"

Damon smiled wanly, "Because I love you."

Kira thought they'd kiss. After what just transpired it seemed to be the thing to do. She said nothing as Damon and Bonnie's head grew closer. Her brows shot up when their foreheads touched, and Kira began shifting her eyes away to give them some measure of privacy. Their rushed breathing foreshadowed what was about to occur. She waited to hear the first contact of lips on lips, and as the seconds passed and that telltale noise didn't happen, Kira peeked at them.

Their mouths were open just enough, as were their eyes. All either of them had to do was shift half an inch closer.

"We should go," Bonnie pulled back, cleared her throat. "Can you...do you think you can walk?"

"Y-yeah."

Kira's shoulders weren't the only shoulders to slump in disappointment.

* * *

16.

There weren't any flights leaving for Virginia until the next day. Anxious to get back, Bonnie was also anxious about Damon. Kira had been nice enough to drive them to a hotel near the airport and said she'd have Scott drop off their rental.

She sat on the edge of one of the double beds staring at the closed bathroom door.

Damon Salvatore—sans immortality—Damon Salvatore splashed cold water on his hot face. He stared blankly at his features studying the slope of his forehead, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the dark circles under his cerulean irises, the short black whiskers poking out around his jaw. He looked like he had been on a bender with Benicio del Toro.

He shut off the water and planted his palms on the tiny sink. Damon breathed evenly through his nose while his pulse skyrocketed.

A vampire without immortality. To Damon _that_ was an abomination.

He elbowed the wall and had to squelch a yelp of pain. He hit his funny bone and there wasn't a damn thing funny about that shit.

"Damon?" came Bonnie's muffled voice, "you okay in there?"

"I'm fine."

He wasn't. Damon didn't know what he was feeling. Less than, more than, subzero. He closed his eyes and probably for the first time in his life he prayed.

Bonnie straightened when the bathroom door burst open. He stared at her for a moment, but she couldn't read his expression. Could only sit and wait. As she did so, Damon reached behind him and tugged his shirt up and off.

Heat rushed to Bonnie's cheeks and she told herself to look away. Topless Damon was nothing new; however, Bonnie had viewed him as an annoying older brother back then. It was safe to say he wasn't that now.

She slid over a little when Damon sat down beside her. It astounded and compounded her that she could feel his body heat. He was still a vampire but without the agelessness to go with it. Badly, Bonnie wanted to know how he honestly felt about it, but sensing that was a touchy subject she could wait.

For the moment they sat side-by-side saying nothing. She exhaled when he inhaled, and besides the muted sound of traffic from the interstate, and a couple having sex in the room next to theirs, it was painfully quiet between them.

Damon reached for her hand, rubbed his thumb where one of the bigger scabs had been. He did the same to her neck, gently tilting it and finding her throat perfect and unsullied.

"Do you want to call Stefan?" Bonnie asked mostly as a distraction.

"No."

"Are you hungry?"

The thought of blood concurrently made Damon hungry and nauseous. "I'll eat later," he worked the fingers that had been touching her neck into her hair.

"Mmm," Bonnie suppressed a shiver. "You should try to eat something now."

Damon's dirty mind hadn't altered. "I can think of one thing I'd like to eat."

Bonnie scowled. "A blood bag."

He smiled and watched as Bonnie rifled through his duffel. "You're mothering me which has to mean I've really been forgiven."

"We don't need to talk about forgiveness right now," she wiggled the blood bag in his face. Damon slipped his food from her fingers but didn't tear into it. Bonnie shifted on her feet wondering why he was looking at her in a way that, if he were a stranger, would make her self-conscious. "What?"

Damon shook his head. "Nothing."

Intuition snitched he was lying. Moreover there was something Bonnie needed to say.

She tipped Damon's head up by the chin, and finally let three years of the past, go. "Thank you."

It occurred to Damon that was his first time hearing those words from Bonnie. She thanked him for little things when they had been in 1994, but it had been a perfunctory, sarcastic kind of thanks. Thanks for drinking all the juice, thanks for eating all the eggs, thanks for picking up my favorite gum. Thank you for saving her life, rippled down his spine, filled his belly.

"You're welcome," he fell back against the mattress, stretching his arms above his head.

Bonnie's thoughts wandered for a moment. "Ms. Cuddles," she murmured absentmindedly.

"What about Ms. Cuddles?"

"We can get your immortality back."

"Bon…" he sat upright.

"Just hear me out. Kira said the healer wanted my magic. Maybe if we went back and I gave him my magic he might be willing to give you your immortality back. My magic is still in Ms. Cuddles."

"And where is Ms. Cuddles now?"

The hope that Bonnie could reach out and touch, vanished. She stared at Damon forlornly. "She was at the cabin."

The cabin Alex and her grunts burned to the ground.

"Da—,"

"No. I did the right thing and I don't regret it," he attested firmly, and rubbed the center of his palm. "I still have my speed and my strength. I can feel that. Though to tell you the truth I don't know what I'd prefer. Being fully human or this."

Bonnie retook her seat next to him.

"Who knows," he added a forged smirk, "I might become a real human boy after a number of years. Be my very own Benjamin Button."

That was unacceptable to the witch who was getting fired up. "We can't leave things like this, Damon. We should go back and get some answers."

"It's not gonna change anything, Bonnie. You're alive and staying that way. Deal with it."

Before things could dissolve into a full blown argument, there was a knock on the door. Bonnie answered revealing Scott and Kira.

Scott handed over the keys to their rental. "You guys doing all right? Need anything?"

"We're fine. Thank you so much, both of you."

With Kira right there, Bonnie debated if she should pull her aside and ask to take her back to wherever she had gotten healed. Damon would be pissed but she didn't care. It hadn't occurred to Bonnie that she easily segued into the old her who stopped at nothing for Damon.

She never got the chance. He came up behind her, nodding to Kira and Scott while handing her his phone. "It's Caroline."

* * *

17.

They gushed and cried about having more time. Made plans to go to the Grand Canyon and deep sea diving off the coast of Martinique. But the conversation took a turn when Bonnie opened up about how far Damon had gone to save her life. There was dead silence on the phone for a full minute and twenty-five seconds.

Bonnie leaned against a wall that was several doors down from their hotel room. She listened to traffic speeding along a not-too-distant highway as she waited out Caroline's shocked silence.

"He loves you more than he ever loved Elena."

That statement left Bonnie so flabbergasted when she swallowed, her saliva traveled down the wrong pipe. She coughed violently and rapped her chest.

"What are you talking about?" Bonnie squeaked. "Damon could…would never…"

"He does," Caroline sing songed. "I'd give you examples, but nothing can really trump giving up his immortality. When has he ever been that selfless?"

For the longest time the unspoken law was the Salvatore's could love no one more or above their love for Elena. To suggest otherwise made one look ignorant.

"You would have done the same for me," Bonnie disputed.

"Yes, I would have because you're my sister. And I haven't been immortal for nearly two hundred years, and my epic love isn't trapped in a sleeping beauty curse. It would have been easy as hell for me to give it up."

Green eyes shuttered closed. That's when it hit her. Damon didn't just give up living forever, he gave up having a future with Elena. For her. Bonnie's legs grew weak and she slumped to her butt on the hard concrete. In twelve hours or less she'd be arriving at Dulles and then making her way to storm The Armory as if it were the Bastille to save Enzo. Enzo whom she hadn't thought about since gaining consciousness. Enzo whom she thought loved her like no one else in her life had. Enzo who, if she thought long and hard about it, probably wouldn't have fallen for if certain events never happened.

She loved Enzo but it felt frail by comparison because everything with them had been secret and undercover. Low profile. His promises had become her gospel. Bonnie believed once everything was over they could have it all. Then Damon reappeared.

Damon changed everything.

"Give me your honest opinion," Bonnie pled.

"About…?"

"What I'm sure you've been dying to say to me for months."

"Ah, _that_. All right," Caroline took a breath. "Let me preface this by saying it's coming from a place of love but…I hate that you're with Enzo."

"What?"

"He's a lighter version of Damon but you know how I feel about knockoffs."

Bonnie trying not to feel offended, sighed, "Save for what you really want or don't bother at all."

"Exactly. Let's be real, any relationship that begins with a kidnapping, I don't see it having a happy ending. Stick two lonely and desperate people together, they'll bond, they'll bone, they may even fall in love. But what if one was already in love with someone else, and that someone else was gone? Then came back? Are those feelings really gone or dormant?

"I don't know what you see in Enzo, and I'm not trying to be mean when I say that. I'm just judging based off my experiences with him, and maybe he's different with you. Maybe he's a great guy who could never catch a break, or maybe he's a whiny opportunist. I don't know. He has you as his girlfriend and he's this seemingly brand new man. But your life…it hasn't really moved forward or improved since you've been with him. I could hear in your voice when we talked how hard you tried to sound happy."

Bonnie's chin quivered. She thought she had done a good job masking how lonely and depressed she was during those stretches of time Enzo had to make nice with Alex to keep his cover intact. Bonnie had brushed it aside as normal. It was normal to miss someone, but perhaps not feel crushed when they were away. It was…without him around Bonnie thought about everything she didn't want to think about. Being in that institute though scary she actually, in a weird way, enjoyed it because it meant having contact with other people. She felt she had a purpose beyond sitting around and waiting for Enzo.

"If you were honestly happy, you wouldn't have sounded like you were barely holding yourself together," Caroline was saying. "But you have to ask yourself, really ask: what's really binding you, love or obligation? And you also need to ask do you feel unconditionally loved?"

The sky Bonnie searched was lightening in color. Love versus obligation, conditional versus unconditional?

By the time Bonnie returned to the room, Damon was asleep. She watched him for a moment before climbing under the covers turning her back to him.

Blue-eyes opened. He had heard her entire conversation with Caroline.

* * *

18.

In the last seventy-three hours he slaughtered vampires, flew across the country, relinquished his immortality, saved a witch, and now he was running from a burning building.

Glass exploded and he ducked instinctively feeling shards of it rain on his head. Damon ditched the gas canister or lest suffer combustion as well. When he was some distance away he stopped and pivoted to watch his handiwork. Dark, thick plumes of black toxic smoke rose out of broken windows like an offering. Flames overtook The Armory burning whatever and _who_ ever remained inside.

Dusting off his hands, Damon ran at a more leisurely pace to his car parked some ways on the side of the road. He glanced at the occupants taking up his backseat, jaw hardening as he fell behind the wheel.

Damon gunned the engine and burned rubber. He felt Bonnie staring at him as she sat with Enzo's head in her lap. Alex had worked him over good. They weren't sure what was done to Enzo as he was shaking, shivering, sweating and mumbling, but while Damon had been busy torching the place, Bonnie had fed Enzo some of her blood.

She looked down as he moved his heavy head. He kissed her hand, "…t-thank yo-u for sav-ving meee, lovvve," Enzo stuttered horribly.

"Don't thank me. Thank Damon. He saved both of us." Their gazes caught and held in the rearview mirror.

Damon broke away first, focusing on the road.

Thanks and accolades were not what he wanted. "Don't mention it," he muttered using everything in his arsenal to disguise his bitterness. "I'll drop you off at my rental and stay at the boardinghouse."

Alarm spiked through the witch. "No, you don't have to."

"It's fine, Bonnie." Besides, I'm not in the mood to hear you two simper over one another and fuck, that tidbit he kept to himself.

He was edgy and cranky. The reason for it was as complex as explaining the Krebs cycle. What was he really expecting? When would he stop being a hopeful fool?

Bonnie had the sinking feeling that Damon didn't want to leave her alone with Enzo, but he wasn't going to protest it either. A few days ago she would have rubbed salt in the wound by coddling and lavishing Enzo with kisses and murmurs of affection right in her estranged buddy's face. To prove a point. The point was dead now along with her anger toward Damon.

A hundred odd miles later, Damon pulled up on his rental property, and dumped Enzo upstairs. He said nothing as Bonnie adjusted the temperature on the thermostat and rub her cold arms.

"I have some blood in the fridge if he needs it."

His voice made Bonnie jump and whirl around. She offered him a tremulous smile.

"I guess this is it," he said.

"I guess so."

Neither moved. Were they saying goodbye for good or see you later?

Since she wasn't asking him to stay Damon took that to mean—leave. He headed for the door.

"Damon."

He paused. Bonnie crossed the expanse of the living room to stand in front of him. There was so much she wanted to say but couldn't figure out how. That had never been a problem, but nothing was the way it used to be. Everything she wanted to tell Damon got stuck somewhere between her courage and her will leaving her to fall back on familiarity.

"Please," Bonnie's timbre was low, shaky until she swallowed and remembered she wasn't seventeen and he wasn't the abusive dick she wanted to keep away from her friend. "Don't do anything reckless."

Damon hadn't allowed himself to hope she might say what he really wanted to hear. Yet he smiled anyways because her edict was something Bonnie would issue. "It's too late for that wouldn't you say?"

"Well, don't do anything else reckless. Not until we know more about your...non-immortality vampirism."

He snorted and cupped her cheek unable to help himself. Her warmth scorched his palm, made his arm tingle. "Don't worry, little witch I'm not leaving you until we're both ready to go."

Bonnie's eyes widened and her breath caught.

"I'll see you later."

He was gone and stole something from Bonnie as he left.

* * *

19.

Three weeks later and blood was still not an acquired taste. Whether taken fresh from the vein or sucked from a latex bag, he couldn't get past the rusty and coarse taste of it. Regardless he was a vampire and needed whatever nourishment blood supplied.

Once Stefan was clued in on the events of California, he stopped glowering whenever Damon entered a room; however, things remained formal and cool between them. Damon was used to it. His buddy Rick? Put a cork in blaming Damon for the problems of his life and offered—reluctantly—to look into any cases of a vampire walking around without immortality to back up his or her fangs. Being pseudo friends with a nerd paid off sometimes the elder Salvatore grunted.

As for his relationship with Bonnie, it had been radio silence. No calls, text, emails, visits. He heard just yesterday from Caroline Bonnie had been in Paris.

So that was that then. She was off having a romantic getaway in the city of love.

Damon acknowledged he should be happy for Bonnie, that she was living her life, doing things she'd never done before. But he'd never been very good at forcing himself to feel things that weren't there.

He thought of going to pay Elena's coffin a visit, but what would he say to her? Whether she could hear or not, no one wanted to hear that the person they loved would be dead by the time they woke up.

And that was the other half of Damon's misery. The constant worry about his life, the quality of it. The day after essentially handing Bonnie over to Enzo, he got drunk and wasted twenty-four hours puking and moaning on a couch about how he'd never drink again. At the bar he'd had an anxiety attack thinking of the numerous ways he could die from almost any fucking thing.

"All those women I had unprotected sex with," Damon lamented, stabbing his fingers though his hair, freaking out. The barkeep merely arched a brow at his muttering.

He learned something. Regeneration was a key component of immortality. With it gone, he healed at the same rate as a human. That loss was a bitter pill to swallow.

Each morning Damon checked his reflection for wrinkles and age spots. Would he start aging rapidly, or progressively? He had no clue. He just knew his days were numbered in a way they've never been before.

Loitering downstairs, Damon tinkered away with the grandfather clock.

The front door opening caught his ear. Damon glanced but then did a double take.

Bonnie.

He tasted his heart in his throat.

She wasn't looking at him but at a folded missive in her head, "… _don't take this as leaving but stepping out of the way so that you can have the kind of life you should have had had Stefan and I never came back here. You won't see this as an act of love, but one of cowardice, and I can say it's both because I can't have your blood on my hands, Bonnie. The rate we're going that's exactly how your story would end and I love you too much to let that happen. Dying for your friends should not be the sum total of your life. Least of all dying for me…_

"… _You are salt, and you need to be here to give the world flavor, hell, love, and hope. Someone out there needs your smile, your hard ass righteousness, your loyalty, your ingenuity, your beauty. So let me do this because otherwise I'd just be in your way, holding you back, and you've been held back enough. I'll miss you more than I can express in this letter…_

"… _love you to life, your friend and bourbon supplier, Damon Salvatore_ ," Bonnie chortled at that colorful salutation. She folded the letter.

His tongue was sand. "You read it."

"I read it."

"Why?"

"I needed closure."

A stone dropped to the bottom of Damon's stomach. He switched the topic to something he figured he could manage to bear. "I thought you were in Paris."

"I was."

"But…"

"I was there…alone."

Well, that changed things.

"I just need to know one thing," Bonnie said and moved closer.

* * *

20.

Her fingers were shaking. Had you ever been so nervous to touch someone? Too excited you could hardly wait but was petrified? That was Bonnie. All nerves and noddle limbs. She felt as if she were outside of her body watching someone else control her movements. She wasn't cupping the back of Damon's neck. She wasn't pulling at the neckline of his shirt as she brought him down to her to kiss him. Bonnie felt it—everywhere—when his mouth connected with hers. She braced for him to push or pull away. He did neither. In fact, he kissed her back. Took control.

Was this real life right now? Damon mused dizzily.

They traded breath, flavor, touches.

He and Bonnie fumbled their way to the couch. Damon groaned as his back smacked into leather and Bonnie's elbow caught him on the hip, but the pain died, was replaced and outsourced. Impatient fingers carded through her hair, angling her head the way he liked. Damon thought he'd lose this horny feeling or wouldn't feel it with the same level of chaotic urgency. It was there in each frenetic pound of his heart, in each unit of blood engorging his cock.

Her panties were wet and she wanted Damon to touch her between her legs. They had interlocked fingers, hugged; he even kissed her on the forehead that one time. He bit her. They had never done this. Pillage the other's mouth as if it contained the secrets of secrets, the spark of life and creation. It hurt to stop, it hurt to keep going, and neither paused as their mouths worked one another over.

Their shirts had ridden up, stomachs touched.

The salty taste of his neck melted on her tongue. Bonnie licked his fluttering pulse nearly sending Damon into convulsions. She grinned. That was an erogenous zone. His own external G-spot. She wrote her name across it. He shuddered again, held her closer.

Damon's ears were so warm he was certain steam rose from them. He felt their body heat pulse, meld and curl around one another. While it was happening he refused to believe life could be kind to him like this. Damon figured he had peaked, but sometimes when you thought you reached as high as you could go, life surprised you with another step.

This was a second chance he wasn't going to screw up.

Finally their feverish kissing slowed, stopped.

Bonnie panted, "Do you want to know if things are over between me and Enzo?"

It had not been easy breaking up with Enzo. Bonnie looked at him one morning and couldn't hide or run from the truth. She had considered fighting her feelings for Damon, try to keep things going with Enzo, but that would have been fucked up. Emotional infidelity. She'd be with Enzo in body, but her heart lied with another. She couldn't do that. Letting him go was the right and only thing to do.

Enzo hadn't been happy about it. Had actually threatened he wouldn't step aside quietly. Bonnie said that was his choice, but that its illogical to fight for a heart that was already gone.

She had taken another risk with Damon. He may have loved her platonically, but that didn't always translate into romance. He kissed her back, but again, Damon and promiscuity (when he wasn't committed) were intertwined. He thought sleeping with Krystal was cheating. What would he think of this?

She had to know either way.

"You wouldn't be here unless they were," he answered.

Bonnie flashed those big doe eyes coyly, "I guess you do know me after all."

Woozy, elated, scared beyond reckoning were just a few emotions ramming through Damon. The loudest of them though was joy unbridled, unhindered, unadulterated joy.

He smiled but it faltered. "There is one thing I don't know."

"What's that?"

"I don't know if you've forgiven me."

Arching up, Bonnie peered down at him. "Was me sucking your face not clear enough that I have?"

"Maybe we should go over it again to make sure I have it down pact," Damon elevated his head off the couch, lips seeking Bonnie's but she covered them with her fingers, pressed him back into the sofa.

"Do you want this? W-want me? Because yesterday was my last day without you, Salvatore."

Damon pecked the corner of Bonnie's mouth, the tip of her nose, her chin, "You have my word we're on the same page."

 **The End.**

 **A/N: Thank you, kittens for reading. There's so much I want to say but it'll just detract from this update. If you follow me on twitter you should know I feel about certain characters and things. And I'll leave it at that. Support those who give you positive representation in their art, and definitely show love to us fanon writers who keep the spirit of Bonnie and Damon alive and in character while developing them. Love you!**

 **Oh, and one more thing. I at first had made Damon human, but as I thought about it some more that would be too simple, and saw immortality as a "perk" of being a vampire, but that it could be taken away and he could still be a vampire but just age at a regular pace. Plus, I don't think the healer could take away vampirism in its totality and make someone human again. Okay, bye!**


End file.
